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Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of race, ethnicity, and society/edited by Richard T. Schaefer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4129-2694-2 (cloth) 1. Racism—Encyclopedias. 2. Race relations—Encyclopedias. 3. Ethnicity—Encyclopedias. I. Schaefer, Richard T. HT1521.E63 2008 305.8003—dc22
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Rolf A. Janke Jerry Westby Diana E. Axelsen Leticia Gutierrez Kate Schroeder Carla Freeman, Robin Gold, D. J. Peck C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Scott Oney, Penny Sippel, Dennis Webb Julie Grayson Candice Harman Amberlyn Erzinger
Contents Editorial Board List of Entries
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List of Images xv Reader’s Guide
xix
About the Editors xxxiii Contributors xxxv Introduction
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Entries A–Z 1–1430 Appendixes Appendix A: Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present 1433 Appendix B: Internet Resources on Race, Ethnicity, and Society 1493 Index 1499
Editorial Board General Editor Richard T. Schaefer Department of Sociology DePaul University, Chicago
Associate Editor Shu-Ju Ada Cheng Department of Sociology DePaul University, Chicago
Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim John J. Egan Urban Center DePaul University, Chicago
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List of Entries Abolitionism: The Movement Abolitionism: The People Abortion Acculturation Adoption Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative Action in the Workplace Afghan Americans African Americans African Americans, Migration of African American Studies African American Women and Work Africans in the United States Afrocentricity Aging Alamo, The Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning Albanian Americans Aleuts Alien Land Acts American Apartheid American Dilemma, An American Indian Movement American Indians. See Native Americans Americanization American Jewish Committee Americans with Disabilities Act Amish Anti-Defamation League Antiracist Education Anti-Semitism Apartheid Apartheid, Laws Arab Americans Argentina Armenian Americans
Asian Americans Asian Americans, New York City Asian American Studies Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage ASPIRA Assimilation Assyrian Americans Asylum Australia Australia, Indigenous People Authoritarian Personality Aztlán Back to Africa Movement Baldwin, James Balkans Bangladeshi Americans Barrio Belgian Americans Belize Bell Curve, The Bilingual Education Biomedicine, African Americans and Birth of a Nation, The Black Bourgeoisie Black Cinema Black Conservatives Black Elk Black Enterprise Blackfeet Black Intellectuals Black-Jewish Relations. See Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period Black Marxism. See Robinson, Cedric Black Metropolis vii
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Black Nationalism Black Panther Party Black Power Blockbusting Blood Quantum Boas, Franz “Boat People” Body Image Borderlands Border Patrol Bosnian Americans Boycott Bracero Program Brain Drain Brazil Brazilian Americans Britain’s Irish Brown Berets Brown v. Board of Education Bulgarian Americans Burakumin Bureau of Indian Affairs Burmese Americans. See Myanmarese Americans Cambodian Americans Canada Canada, Aboriginal Women Canada, First Nations Canadian Americans Cape Verde Caribbean Caribbean Americans Carmichael, Stokely Caste Census, U.S. Central Americans in the United States Chávez, César Cherokee Cheyenne Chicago School of Race Relations Chicano Movement Child Development Chin, Vincent China Chinatowns Chinese Americans
Chinese Exclusion Act Choctaw Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Citizenship Civil Disobedience Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement, Women and Code of the Street Collins, Patricia Hill Colombia Colonialism Colonias Color Blindness Color Line Community Cohesion Community Empowerment Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Contact Hypothesis Cosmopolitanism Creole Crime and Race Criminal Processing Critical Race Theory Croatian Americans Cross-Frontier Contacts Crown Heights, Brooklyn Cuba Cuba: Migration and Demography Cuban Americans Cultural Capital Cultural Relativism Culture of Poverty Cypriot Americans Czech Americans Danish Americans Dawes Act of 1887 Death Penalty Declining Significance of Race, The Deficit Model of Ethnicity Deloria, Vine, Jr. Desi Deviance and Race Diaspora Digital Divide
List of Entries
Dillingham Flaw Discrimination Discrimination, Environmental Hazards Discrimination, Measuring Discrimination in Housing Domestic Violence Domestic Work Dominican Americans Dominican Republic Double Consciousness Douglass, Frederick Drake, St. Clair Dred Scott v. Sandford Drug Use Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Dutch Americans East Harlem Educational Performance and Attainment Educational Stratification Egyptian Americans Emancipation Proclamation English Americans. See United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States English Immersion Environmental Justice Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Estonian Americans Ethnic Conflict Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Group Ethnicity, Negotiating Ethnic Succession Ethnocentrism Ethnonational Minorities Ethnoviolence Eugenics Europe Familism Family Fanon, Frantz Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Feminism
Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Filipino Americans Film, Latino Finnish Americans Foreign Students France Fraternities and Sororities Frazier, E. Franklin French Americans FUBU Company Gaming, Native American Gangs Gautreaux Decision Gender and Race, Intersection of Gender Identity. See Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; Sexuality Genocide Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908) Gentrification Georgian Americans German Americans Gerrymandering Ghetto Glass Ceiling Globalization Global Perspective Greek Americans Grutter v. Bollinger Guatemalan Americans Guest Workers Hafu Haiti Haitian Americans Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison Haole Hapa Harlem Harlem Renaissance Hate Crimes Hate Crimes in Canada Hawai‘i, Race in Hawaiians Head Start and Immigrants
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Health, Immigrant Health Disparities Hernandez v. Texas Higher Education Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Hip-Hop Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and Hispanics Hispanic Versus Latino HIV/AIDS Hmong Americans Holocaust Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Homelessness Homicide Honduran Americans Hong Kong hooks, bell Hopi Hourglass Economy Housing Audits Huerta, Dolores Hull House School of Race Relations Hungarian Americans Hurricane Katrina Hutterites Icelandic Americans Identity Politics Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 Immigrant Communities Immigration, Economic Impact of Immigration, U.S. Immigration and Gender Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Immigration and Race Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Incarcerated Parents India Indian Americans Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Indonesian Americans
Informal Economy Institutional Discrimination Integration. See Resegregation; School Desegregation Intelligence Tests Intercultural Communication Intergroup Relations, Surveying Intermarriage Internal Colonialism Internalized Racism International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Internment Camps Interracial Friendships Invisible Man Iranian Americans Iraqi Americans Ireland Irish Americans Islamophobia Issei Italian Americans Jackson, Jesse, Sr. Jamaica Jamaican Americans Japan Japanese American Citizens League Japanese Americans Jewish Americans Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period Jewry, Black American Jim Crow Johnson, Charles S. Jordanian Americans Juvenile Justice Kennewick Man Kenya King, Martin Luther, Jr. Kinship Kitano, Harry H. L. Korean Americans Ku Klux Klan
List of Entries
Kurdish Americans Kwanzaa Labeling Labor Market Segmentation Labor Unions Laotian Americans La Raza La Raza Unida Party Latin America, Indigenous People Latina/o Studies Latvian Americans Lebanese Americans Lee, Spike Leisure Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life Expectancy Lincoln, Abraham Lithuanian Americans London Bombings (July 7, 2005) Loving v. Virginia Lynching Machismo Malcolm X Mandela, Nelson Maquiladoras Marginalization “Marielitos” Marshall, Thurgood Marxism and Racism McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Media and Race Medical Experimentation Melting Pot Mennonites Menominee Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Mexican Americans Mexico Military and Race Minority/Majority Minority Rights Model Minority Mormons, Race and
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Multicultural Education Multicultural Social Movements Multiracial Identity Muslim Americans Muslims in Canada Muslims in Europe Myanmarese Americans National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Congress of American Indians National Council of La Raza National Indian Youth Council National Origins System National Rainbow Coalition National Urban League Nation of Islam Native American Education Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 Native American Health Care Native American Identity Native American Identity, Legal Background Native Americans Native Americans, Environment and Nativism Navajo Negro League Baseball Newton, Huey Nicaraguan Americans Nigeria Nigerian Americans Nikkeijin Nisei Northern Ireland, Racism in Norwegian Americans Ojibwa One-Drop Rule Operation Bootstrap Operation PUSH Orientalism Pachucos/Pachucas Pacific Islanders Pakistani Americans
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Palestinian Americans Panamanian Americans Pan-Asian Identity Panethnic Identity Pan-Indianism Parenting Park, Robert E. Parks, Rosa PATRIOT Act of 2001 Peltier, Leonard Peoplehood People of Color Peru Peruvian Americans Peyote Pipeline Plessy v. Ferguson Pluralism Police Polish Americans Political Economy Popular Culture, Racism and Portuguese Americans Prejudice Prisons Privilege Proposition 187 Public Housing Pueblos Puerto Rican Americans Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund Puerto Rico
Racial Profiling Racism Racism, Aversive Racism, Cultural Racism, Types of Racism, Unintentional Rainbow Coalition. See National Rainbow Coalition Rap: The Genre Rap: The Movement Redlining Red Power Refugees Religion Religion, African Americans Religion, Minority Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 Religious Movements, New Remittances Reparations, Slavery Repatriation of Mexican Americans Resegregation Reservation System Restrictive Covenants Return Migration Reverse Discrimination Rites of Passage Robbers Cave Experiment Robinson, Cedric Robinson, Jackie Roma Roman Catholics Romanian Americans Russia
Race Race, Comparative Perspectives Race, Declining Significance of. See Declining Significance of Race, The Race, Social Construction of Race, UNESCO Statements on Racetalk Racial Formation Racial Identity Racial Identity Development Racialization
Sacred Sites, Native American Sacred Versus Secular Salvadoran Americans Sami Samoan Americans Samora, Julian San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez Sand Creek Massacre Sansei Santería
List of Entries
Scapegoats Schmiedeleut School Desegregation School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning Science Faculties, Women of Color on Scottish Americans. See United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Separate but Equal Serbian Americans Sexual Harassment Sexuality Sicilian Americans Singapore Sioux Slavery Slovak Americans Slovene Americans Social Capital Social Darwinism Social Distance Social Inequality Social Mobility Social Support Social Work South Africa, Republic of South Americans in the United States Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Sovereignty, Native American Spanglish Spanish Americans Split Labor Market Sri Lankan Americans Stereotypes Stereotype Threat Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Sundown Towns Swedish Americans Symbolic Ethnicity Symbolic Religiosity Syrian Americans Taiwan Talented Tenth
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Terrorism Testing Thai Americans Third-Generation Principle Thorpe, Jim Tibetan Americans Title IX Tlingit Tongan Americans Tracking Trail of Broken Treaties Transnational People Transracial Adoption Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) Trinidad Truth, Sojourner Tubman, Harriet Turkey Turkish Americans Ugandan Americans Ukrainian Americans Underclass United Kingdom United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States United States v. Fordice Urban League. See National Urban League Urban Legends Urban Riots “Us and Them” U.S. Census. See Census, U.S. Veil Victim Discounting Victimization Vietnamese Americans Voting Rights Washington, Booker T. Washington, Harold WASP Water Rights Wealth Distribution “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform
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Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Welsh Americans. See United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States West Indian Americans “Wetbacks” White Flight Whiteness Whiteness, Measuring Whiteness and Masculinity White Privilege White Racism White Supremacy Movement
Williams, Fannie Barrier Wilson, William Julius Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Xenophobia Young Lords Zapatista Rebellion Zimbabwe Zionism Zoot Suit Riots
List of Images Abolitionism: The People: Harpers Ferry insurrection (photo) 4 Abortion: Table 1, Estimated Abortion Rate by Poverty Status, According to Race and Ethnicity 7 Adoption: Family with five adopted, Russian-born children (photo) 10 Afghanistan (map) 19 African Americans: Figure 1, Estimated Percent of Blacks in the United States 27 African American Women and Work: African American women sorting tobacco (photo) 36 Africans in the United States: Senegalese woman in New York (photo) 38 Albania (map) 47 Aleutian Islands (map) 50 Aleuts: Aleutian child, 1938 (photo) 51 American Apartheid: Public housing in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn (photo) 55 Anti-Semitism: The Eternal Jew poster (photo) 77 Argentina (map) 87 Armenia (map) 89 Asian Americans: Figure 1, Estimated Percent of Asians in the United States 95 Assyria (map) 108 Australia, Indigenous People: June Smith and her work at a Sydney art gallery (photo) 115 Balkans (map) 129 Bangladesh (map) 132 Barrio: Mariachis in East Los Angeles, California (photo) 134 Belgium (map) 136 Belize (map) 138 Birth of a Nation, The: Scene from The Birth of a Nation (photo) 150
Black Conservatives: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (photo) 157 Black Enterprise: Figure 1, Proportion of Employed Black and White College Graduates in Managerial Jobs 162 Figure 2, Percentage of People Over 24 Who Have Completed College, by Race 163 Border Patrol: U.S. border with Mexico (photo) 193 Bosnia-Herzegovina (map) 195 Brazil (map) 200 Brazilian men practicing capoeira on the beachfront (photo) 201 Britain’s Irish: Figure 1, Irish-born Recorded in Great Britain 207 Bulgaria (map) 213 Cambodia (map) 221 Canada, First Nations: A Haida gift offering to the Tlingit (photo) 231 Cape Verde (map) 235 Caribbean Islands (map) 237 Caste: Hindu children of high caste, Bombay, India (photo) 247 Central America (map) 252 Central Americans in the United States: Table 1, Central American Population in the United States 252 Chávez, César: César Chávez and Coretta Scott King (photo) 256 Cheyenne: Great Omaha powwow dance of the Cheyenne in Montana (photo) 264 Child Development: African American grandmother and grandchildren (photo) 275 China (map) 278
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Chinatowns: Chinese New Year Parade (photo) 282 Civil Religion: Pledging allegiance to the flag (photo) 303 Civil Rights Movement: Civil rights march (photo) 305 Colombia (map) 316 Contact Hypothesis: Office relations (photo) 330 Croatia (map) 347 Cuba (map) 352 Cuban Americans: Cuban immigrants (photo) 357 Cyprus (map) 365 Czech Republic (map) 367 Danish Americans: Danish Lutheran church, Evan, Minnesota (photo) 370 Deficit Model of Ethnicity: Cuban exile in Miami (photo) 379 Denmark (map) 369 Discrimination: Table 1, Median Income by Race and Gender 393 Dominican Americans: Dominican Day parade (photo) 409 Dominican Republic (map) 410 Douglass, Frederick (photo) 414 Dred Scott v. Sandford: General parody of the 1860 presidential contest (cartoon) 417 Drug Use: Table 1, Percentage of Persons Using Drugs in the Past 30 Days, by Age and Race 421 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (photo) 423 Educational Performance and Attainment: Table 1, Educational Performance and Attainment by Race and Ethnicity 433 Egypt (map) 438 El Salvador (map) 1185 English Immersion: Arab American girl reading (photo) 440 Estonia (map) 448 Ethnic Enclaves: Festival in Little Italy (photo) 454 Eugenics: Buchenwald concentration camp (photo) 472 Father Divine Peace Movement: Father Divine (photo) 484 Filipino Americans: Filipino American couple (photo) 494 Finland (map) 500 France (map) 506
Fraternities and Sororities: Sorority members (photo) 510 Gaming, Native American: Gamblers in Native American casino (photo) 520 Gentrification: Construction in Harlem (photo) 536 Georgia (map) 537 German Americans: German emigrants (engraving) 541 Germany (map) 540 Glass Ceiling: Latina executive (photo) 549 Greece (map) 559 Guatemala (map) 564 Haiti (map) 571 Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes (photo) 587 Hawai‘i (map) 599 Hawai‘i, Race in: Table 1, Most Common Racial/Ethnic Groups in Hawai‘i 597 Table 2, Summary Statistics Based on Selected Socioeconomic Indicators by Group 598 Hawaiians: Figure 1, Native Hawaiian Populations Before and After Western Contact 600 Higher Education: Fisk University students (photo) 613 Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue: Figure 1, Causes and Stress Reactions to Racial Battle Fatigue 617 Hispanics: Figure 1, Estimated Percent of Latinos/Hispanics in the United States 626 Homelessness: Homeless person (photo) 642 Honduras (map) 647 Hong Kong (map) 648 Hungary (map) 662 Hurricane Katrina: Hurricane Katrina victims (photo) 665 Iceland (map) 673 Immigration: Figure 1, Number of New Lawful Permanent Residents 687 Figure 2, Legal Status of the U.S. Foreign-Born Population 690 Immigration Reform and Control Act 1986: Illegal immigrants (photo) 702 India (map) 707 Indian Americans: Indian American woman (photo) 712 Indonesia (map) 721
List of Images
Intermarriage: Interracial couple with their daughter (photo) 737 Internment camps: Schoolchildren at Manzanar (photo) 745 Japanese Americans Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi, at a press conference on January 19, 1983 (photo) 746 Iran (map) 752 Iraq (map) 754 Ireland (map) 755 Irish Americans: Immigration cartoon 758 Table 1, Immigration From Ireland to the United States 759 Italian Americans: Italian neighborhood market (photo) 768 Italy (map) 767 Jamaica (map) 775 Jamaican Americans: Harry Belafonte (photo) 776 Japan (map) 779 Kenya (map) 803 King, Martin Luther, Jr. (photo) 806 Korea, North and South (map) 812 Ku Klux Klan: Ku Klux Klan rally (photo) 815 Laos (map) 827 Latin America, Indigenous People: Aztec Indian children in Mexico (photo) 834 Latvia (map) 839 Lebanon (map) 840 Lee, Spike: Table 1, Chronology of Films by Spike Lee 842 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender: Gay rights rally (photo) 847 Life Expectancy: Figure 1, Life Expectancy at Birth, by Race and Sex 850 Figure 2, Infant Mortality Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin 851 Table 1, Ten Leading Causes of Death Among Non-Hispanic Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites 849 Lithuania (map) 854 Loving v. Virginia: Mildred and Richard Loving (photo) 858 Malcolm X (photo) 865 Marshall, Thurgood: Official portrait of the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court: Justice Thurgood Marshall (photo) 875
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Medical Experimentation: Tuskegee Syphilis Study (photo) 884 Mexican Americans: Immigration reform demonstration (photo) 893 Mexico (map) 898 Myanmar (map) 929 Native American Education: Carlisle Indian School physical education class (photo) 945 Native Americans: Figure 1, American Indian and Alaska Native Household Population by State 965 Table 1, American Indian and Alaska Native Household Population by Tribal Group 960 Navajo: Three Navajo women weaving (photo) 971 Negro League Baseball: Homestead Grays (photo) 973 The Netherlands (map) 427 Nicaragua (map) 978 Nigeria (map) 980 Norway (map) 991 Ojibwa: Ojibwa Indian family in a canoe (photo) 996 One-Drop Rule: Table 1, Percent Reporting Two or More Races by Specified Race 999 Pacific Islanders: Pacific Island census workers taking a break (photo) 1009 Table 1, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population 1007 Pacific Islands (map) 1007 Pakistan (map) 1010 Panama (map) 1016 Parks, Rosa (photo) 1029 Peru (map) 1040 Philippines (map) 493 Poland (map) 1056 Polish Americans: Polish family working in the fields near Baltimore, Maryland (photo) 1057 Portugal (map) 1063 Puerto Rico (map) 1086 Workers hoeing a tobacco slope in Puerto Rico (photo) 1087 Racial Profiling: Table 1, Race Differences in Perceptions of Profiling 1112 Red Power: Sioux tribesmen on Alcatraz (photo) 1130 Religion, African Americans: Mass at an African American Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago (photo) 1137
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Roman Catholics: Consecration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (photo) 1171 Romania (map) 1173 Russia (map) 1175 Samoa (map) 1189 Scapegoats: Men in a Chinese lodging house in San Francisco smoking opium (photo) 1202 School Desegregation (photo) 1205 Segregation: Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn in Halifax, North Carolina (photo) 1213 Serbia (map) 1222 Sicily (map) 1227 Singapore (map) 1228 Sioux: Sioux at the White House (sketch) 1232 Slovakia (map) 1238 Slovene Americans: Figure 1, Most Important Settlements of Slovene Americans 1243 Slovenia (map) 1241 Social Support: Three-generation Asian American family having dinner (photo) 1256 South Africa, Republic of (map) 1261 South Americans in the United States: Table 1, South American Immigration to the United States 1264 Table 2, Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Population From Select Latin American Countries 1266 Spain (map) 1273 Sri Lanka (map) 1276 Sundown Towns: Figure 1, Sundown Counties in Indiana 1284
Sweden (map) 1286 Swedish Americans: Bishop Hill Colony (photo) 1287 Syria (map) 1291 Taiwan (map) 1293 Terrorism: Airport security (photo) 1298 Thai Americans: Ritual of paying respect to the teacher at a Thai American Buddhist temple (photo) 1302 Thailand (map) 1301 Thorpe, Jim (photo) 1305 Title IX: Women’s ice hockey game (photo) 1309 Tlingit: Kaw-Claa (photo) 1311 A new chief (photo) 1312 Tonga (map) 1314 Trinidad (map) 1326 Table 1, Distribution of the Population by Race/Ethnicity in Trinidad 1328 Truth, Sojourner (photo) 1329 Turkey (map) 1334 Uganda (map) 1339 Ukraine (map) 1341 United Kingdom (map) 1347 Queen Elizabeth II (photo) 1348 Vietnam (map) 1366 Vietnamese Americans (photo) 1367 Wells-Barnett, Ida: Lynching caught on camera (photo) 1389 West Indies (map) 1391 White Supremacy Movement: George Lincoln Rockwell (photo) 1409 Zimbabwe (map) 1425
Reader’s Guide This list is provided to assist readers in locating entries on related topics. Some entry titles appear in more than one category.
Biographies
Thorpe, Jim Truth, Sojourner Tubman, Harriet Washington, Booker T. Washington, Harold Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Williams, Fannie Barrier Wilson, William Julius
Baldwin, James Black Elk Boas, Franz Carmichael, Stokely Chávez, César Chin, Vincent Collins, Patricia Hill Deloria, Vine, Sr. Douglass, Frederick Drake, St. Clair Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Fanon, Frantz Frazier, E. Franklin hooks, bell Huerta, Dolores Jackson, Jesse, Jr. Johnson, Charles S. King, Martin Luther, Jr. Kitano, Harry H. L. Lee, Spike Lincoln, Abraham Malcolm X Mandela, Nelson Marshall, Thurgood Newton, Huey Park, Robert E. Parks, Rosa Peltier, Leonard Robinson, Cedric Robinson, Jackie Samora, Julian
Community and Urban Issues American Apartheid Apartheid Asian Americans, New York City Barrio Black Metropolis Blockbusting Chicago School of Race Relations Chinatowns Code of the Street Colonialism Colonias Community Cohesion Community Empowerment Crown Heights, Brooklyn Culture of Poverty Discrimination in Housing East Harlem Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Succession Gangs Gautreaux Decision Gentrification xix
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Ghetto Harlem Homelessness Housing Audits Hull House School of Race Relations Hurricane Katrina National Urban League Public Housing Redlining Resegregation School Desegregation Segregation Sundown Towns Urban Riots White Flight Zoot Suit Riots
Concepts and Theories Acculturation Afrocentricity Americanization Anti-Semitism Assimilation Asylum Authoritarian Personality Aztlán Barrio Black Bourgeoisie Black Nationalism Black Power Blockbusting Blood Quantum “Boat People” Body Image Boycott Brain Drain Caste Chinatowns Citizenship Civil Disobedience Civil Religion Code of the Street Colonialism Colonias Color Blindness
Color Line Community Cohesion Community Empowerment Contact Hypothesis Cosmopolitanism Critical Race Theory Cultural Capital Cultural Relativism Culture of Poverty Deficit Model of Ethnicity Desi Diaspora Digital Divide Dillingham Flaw Double Consciousness Environmental Justice Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Group Ethnicity, Negotiating Ethnic Succession Ethnocentrism Ethnonational Minorities Ethnoviolence Eugenics Familism Feminism Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Genocide Gentrification Gerrymandering Ghetto Glass Ceiling Globalization Guest Workers Hafu Hapa Hate Crimes Hate Crimes in Canada Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Hispanic Versus Latino Holocaust Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Homelessness Hourglass Economy Housing Audits
Reader’s Guide
Identity Politics Informal Economy Intercultural Communication Internal Colonialism Internalized Racism Internment Camps Invisible Man Islamophobia Jim Crow Kinship Kwanzaa Labeling Labor Market Segmentation La Raza Machismo Marginalization “Marielitos” Marxism and Racism Melting Pot Minority/Majority Model Minority Multiracial Identity Native American Identity Nativism Nikkeijin Nisei One-Drop Rule Orientalism Pan-Asian Identity Panethnic Identity Pan-Indianism Peoplehood People of Color Pipeline Pluralism Political Economy Privilege Race Race, Social Construction of Racetalk Racial Formation Racial Identity Racial Identity Development Racialization Racial Profiling Racism
Racism, Aversive Racism, Cultural Racism, Unintentional Redlining Red Power Refugees Remittances Resegregation Restrictive Covenants Return Migration Reverse Discrimination Rites of Passage Sacred Versus Secular Sansei Scapegoats Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Separate but Equal Sexual Harassment Social Capital Social Darwinism Social Distance Sovereignty, Native American Spanglish Split Labor Market Stereotypes Stereotype Threat Sundown Towns Symbolic Ethnicity Symbolic Religiosity Talented Tenth Third-Generation Principle Tracking Transnational People Underclass Urban Legends “Us and Them” Veil Victim Discounting Victimization WASP “Welfare Queen” “Wetbacks” White Flight Whiteness White Privilege
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White Racism Xenophobia
Criminal Justice Apartheid, Laws Crime and Race Criminal Processing Death Penalty Deviance and Race Drug Use Gangs Hate Crimes Hate Crimes, Canada Homicide Incarcerated Parents Internment Camps Jim Crow Juvenile Justice Labeling Lynching Pachucos/Pachucas PATRIOT Act of 2001 Police Prisons Racial Profiling Victim Discounting Victimization
Economics and Stratification Affirmative Action in the Workplace Alien Land Acts Americans with Disabilities Act Apartheid Barrio Black Bourgeoisie Black Enterprise Black Power Boycott Bracero Program Brain Drain Caste Colonialism Color Line Culture of Poverty
Declining Significance of Race, The Digital Divide Discrimination Discrimination, Environmental Hazards Discrimination, Measuring Discrimination in Housing Domestic Work Double Consciousness Environmental Justice Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) FUBU Company Gaming, Native American Gentrification Ghetto Glass Ceiling Globalization Guest Workers Health Disparities Homelessness Hourglass Economy Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 Informal Economy Institutional Discrimination Internal Colonialism Labor Market Segmentation Labor Unions Maquiladoras Marxism and Racism Model Minority Operation Bootstrap Political Economy Public Housing Redlining Remittances Reparations, Slavery Repatriation of Mexican Americans Resegregation Reservation System Restrictive Covenants Return Migration Social Capital Social Darwinism Social Inequality Social Mobility Split-Labor Market
Reader’s Guide
Talented Tenth Transnational People Underclass Water Rights Wealth Distribution “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform
Education Affirmative Action in Education African American Studies Afrocentricity Antiracist Education Asian American Studies Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage Bell Curve, The Bilingual Education Biomedicine, African Americans and Black Intellectuals Brain Drain Brown v. Board of Education Chicago School of Race Relations Child Development Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Cultural Capital Digital Divide Discrimination Educational Performance and Attainment Educational Stratification English Immersion Fraternities and Sororities Grutter v. Bollinger Head Start and Immigrants Hernandez v. Texas Higher Education Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Hull House School of Race Relations Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Intelligence Tests Intercultural Communication Latina/o Studies Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Model Minority Multicultural Education
Native American Education Pipeline Resegregation Reverse Discrimination San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez School Desegregation School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning Science Faculties, Women of Color on Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Separate but Equal Social Capital Spanglish Talented Tenth Testing Title IX Tracking United States v. Fordice
Gender and Family Abortion African Americans, Migration of African American Women and Work Aging Body Image Canada, Aboriginal Women Child Development Civil Rights Movement, Women and Culture of Poverty Domestic Violence Domestic Work Familism Family Feminism Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Gender and Race, Intersection of Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and Homelessness Hull House School of Race Relations Immigration and Gender Incarcerated Parents Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 Institutional Discrimination
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Intermarriage Kinship Kwanzaa Leisure Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Loving v. Virginia Machismo Parenting Rites of Passage Science Faculties, Women of Color on Sexual Harassment Sexuality Social Support Social Work Title IX Transracial Adoption Veil “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform Whiteness and Masculinity
Global Perspectives Apartheid Apartheid, Laws Argentina Asylum Australia Australia, Indigenous People Back to Africa Monument Balkans Belize Borderlands Bracero Program Brain Drain Brazil Britain’s Irish Burakumin Canada Canada, Aboriginal Women Canada, First Nations Cape Verde Caribbean Caste China Citizenship
Colombia Colonialism Cosmopolitanism Creole Cross-Frontier Contacts Cuba Cuba: Migration and Demography Diaspora Dillingham Flaw Dominican Republic Ethnic Conflict Ethnocentrism Ethnonational Minorities Europe Foreign Students France Genocide Globalization Global Perspectives Guest Workers Hafu Haiti Hate Crimes in Canada Hawai‘i, Race in Holocaust Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Hong Kong India Intercultural Communication International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Ireland Jamaica Japan Kenya Latin America, Indigenous People London Bombing (July 7, 2005) Maquiladoras Marxism and Racism Mexico Muslims in Canada Muslims in Europe Nigeria Nikkeijin Northern Island, Racism in Orientalism
Reader’s Guide
Peru Puerto Rico Race, Comparative Perspectives Race, UNESCO Statements on Racism Refugees Remittances Roma Russia Sami Santería Singapore South Africa, Republic of Taiwan Transnational People Trinidad Turkey United Kingdom Veil Xenophobia Zapatista Rebellion Zimbabwe Zionism
Health and Social Welfare Abortion Adoption Aging Americans with Disabilities Act Biomedicine, African Americans and Body Image Census, U.S. Child Development Cuba: Migration and Demography Discrimination, Environmental Drug Use Environmental Justice Eugenics Familism Family Health, Immigrant Health Disparities HIV/AIDS Hurricane Katrina Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978
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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Leisure Life Expectancy Medical Experimentation Native American Health Care Native Americans, Environment and Social Support Social Work “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform
Immigration and Citizenship Acculturation Alien Land Acts Americanization Assimilation Asylum Bilingual Education “Boat People” Borderlands Border Patrol Brain Drain Chinese Exclusion Act Citizenship Colonialism Colonias Cosmopolitanism Cross-Frontier Contacts Dawes Act of 1887 Deficit Model of Ethnicity Diaspora Dillingham Flaw Domestic Work English Immersion Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Succession Ethnonational Minorities Foreign Students Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908) Guest Workers Haitian and Cuban Immigrations: A Comparison Head Start and Immigrants Health, Immigrant Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
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Immigrant Communities Immigration, Economic Impact of Immigration, U.S. Immigration and Gender Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Immigration and Race Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 “Marielitos” McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Minority Rights National Origins Systems Operation Bootstrap PATRIOT Act of 2001 Proposition 187 Refugees Remittances Repatriation of Mexican Americans Return Migration Symbolic Ethnicity Third-Generation Principle Transnational People Voting Rights “Wetbacks” Xenophobia
Legislation, Court Decisions, and Treaties Alaska Natives, Legislation Concerning Alien Land Acts Americans with Disabilities Act Apartheid, Laws Blockbusting Brown v. Board of Education Bureau of Indian Affairs Chinese Exclusion Act Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Dawes Act of 1887 Dillingham Flaw Dred Scott v. Sandford Emancipation Proclamation Gautreaux Decision Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908) Grutter v. Bollinger Hernandez v. Texas Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act of 1988 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Loving v. Virginia McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 Native American Identity, Legal Background Operation Bootstrap PATRIOT Act of 2001 Plessy v. Ferguson Proposition 187 Repatriation of Mexican Americans San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez Separate but Equal Title IX Trail of Broken Treaties Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) United States v. Fordice Voting Rights
Media, Sports, and Entertainment Birth of a Nation, The Black Cinema Body Image Digital Divide Film, Latino Harlem Renaissance Hip-Hop Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and Kwanzaa Leisure Media and Race Negro League Baseball Popular Culture, Racism and Rap: The Genre Rap: The Movement
Organizations American Indian Movement American Jewish Committee Anti-Defamation League
Reader’s Guide
ASPIRA Back to Africa Movement Black Panther Party Brown Berets Bureau of Indian Affairs Census, U.S. Chicago Movement Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Fraternities and Sororities Gangs Japanese American Citizens League Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions La Raza Unida Party Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Congress of American Indians National Council of La Raza National Indian Youth Council National Rainbow Coalition National Urban League Nation of Islam Operation PUSH Pachucos/Pachucas Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund Religion, Minority Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Young Lords
Prejudice and Discrimination Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative Action in the Workplace American Apartheid American Dilemma, An Antiracist Education Anti-Semitism Apartheid Authoritarian Personality
Aztlán Birth of a Nation, The Black Metropolis Body Image Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement, Women and Colonialism Color Line Contact Hypothesis Crime and Race Critical Race Theory Deficit Model of Ethnicity Discrimination Discrimination, Environmental Hazards Discrimination, Measuring Discrimination in Housing Double Consciousness Environmental Justice Ethnic Conflict Eugenics Hate Crimes Hate Crimes in Canada Health Disparities Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Housing Audits Immigration and Race Institutional Discrimination Intelligence Tests Intergroup Relations, Surveying Internal Colonialism Internalized Racism International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Interracial Friendships Invisible Man Jim Crow Ku Klux Klan Labeling Lynching Marginalization Marxism and Racism Medical Experimentation Military and Race Minority Rights Nativism
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Orientalism Popular Culture, Racism and Prejudice Privilege Racialization Racial Profiling Racism Racism, Aversive Racism, Cultural Racism, Types of Racism, Unintentional Racism, White Reparations, Slavery Reverse Discrimination Robbers Cave Experiment Scapegoats Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Slavery Social Darwinism Social Distance Social Inequality Stereotypes Stereotype Threat Sundown Towns “Us and Them” “Welfare Queen” White Supremacy Movement Whiteness Whiteness, Measuring Whiteness and Masculinity Xenophobia
Public Policy Abortion Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative Action in the Workplace American Apartheid American Dilemma, An Apartheid, Laws Asylum Bilingual Education Black Conservatives Black Metropolis Blockbusting
Census, U.S. Citizenship Civil Disobedience Civil Rights Movement Community Empowerment Criminal Processing Death Penalty Digital Divide Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Gautreaux Decision Gerrymandering Hate Crimes Health Disparities Homelessness Housing Audits Hurricane Katrina Intelligence Tests Juvenile Justice Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions Lynching Marginalization Marxism and Racism Medical Experimentation Native Americans, Environment and Nativism Orientalism Political Economy Proposition 187 Public Housing Racial Profiling Redlining Refugees Reparations, Slavery Reverse Discrimination Segregation Separate but Equal Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Sexual Harassment Slavery Sovereignty, Native American Testing Title IX Voting Rights White Supremacy Movement
Reader’s Guide
Racial, Ethnic, and Nationality Groups Afghan Americans African Americans Africans in the United States Albanian Americans Aleuts Amish Arab Americans Armenian Americans Asian Americans Assyrian Americans Australia, Indigenous People Bangladeshi Americans Belgian Americans Blackfeet Bosnian Americans Brazilian Americans Britain’s Irish Bulgarian Americans Burakumin Cambodian Americans Canada, First Nations Canadian Americans Caribbean Americans Central Americans in the United States Cherokee Cheyenne Chinese Americans Choctaw Creole Croatian Americans Cuban Americans Cypriot Americans Czech Americans Danish Americans Desi Dominican Americans Dutch Americans Egyptian Americans Estonian Americans Filipino Americans Finnish Americans French Americans Georgian Americans German Americans
Greek Americans Guatemalan Americans Haitian Americans Haole Hawaiians Hispanics Hmong Americans Honduran Americans Hopi Hungarian Americans Hutterites Icelandic Americans Indian Americans Indonesian Americans Iranian Americans Iraqi Americans Irish Americans Issei Italian Americans Jamaican Americans Japanese Americans Jewish Americans Jewry, Black American Jordanian Americans Korean Americans Kurdish Americans Laotian Americans Latin America, Indigenous People Latvian Americans Lebanese Americans Lithuanian Americans Mennonites Menominee Mexican Americans Muslim Americans Myanmarese Americans Native Americans Navajo Nicaraguan Americans Nigerian Americans Nisei Norwegian Americans Ojibwa Pacific Islanders Pakistani Americans Palestinian Americans
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Panamanian Americans Peruvian Americans Polish Americans Portuguese Americans Pueblos Puerto Rican Americans Roma Romanian Americans Salvadoran Americans Sami Samoan Americans Sansei Schmiedeleut Serbian Americans Sicilian Americans Sioux Slovak Americans Slovene Americans South Americans in the United States Spanish Americans Sri Lankan Americans Swedish Americans Syrian Americans Thai Americans Tibetan Americans Tlingit Tongan Americans Turkish Americans Ugandan Americans Ukrainian Americans United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States Vietnamese Americans West Indian Americans
Religion Amish Civil Religion Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Hutterites Islamophobia Jewish Americans Jewry, Black American Mennonites Mormons, Race and
Muslim Americans Muslims in Canada Muslims in Europe Nation of Islam Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 Peyote Religion Religion, African Americans Religion, Minority Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 Religious Movements, New Roman Catholics Sacred Sites, Native Americans Sacred Versus Secular Santería Schmeideleut Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) Symbolic Religiosity Veil
Sociopolitical Movements and Conflicts Abolitionism: The Movement Abolitionism: The People African Americans, Migration of Alamo, The American Indian Movement ASPIRA Aztlán Back to Africa Movement Black Nationalism Black Panther Party Black Power Boycott Brown Berets Chicano Movement Civil Disobedience Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement, Women and Cross-Frontier Contacts Crown Heights, Brooklyn Environmental Justice Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Feminism
Reader’s Guide
Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Harlem Renaissance Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period Kennewick Man Ku Klux Klan La Raza La Raza Unida Party London Bombings (July 7, 2005) Military and Race Multicultural Social Movements Nation of Islam
Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Red Power Sand Creek Massacre Sovereignty, Native American Terrorism Trail of Broken Treaties Voting Rights Water Rights White Supremacy Movement Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Young Lords Zapatista Rebellion Zionism Zoot Suit Riots
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About the Editors About the General Editor Richard T. Schaefer is the Vincent DePaul Professor of Sociology at DePaul University and served as chair of the department from 1997 through 2003. He previously taught at Western Illinois University in Macomb, where he also served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Schaefer has been interested in race and ethnicity since the beginning of his college studies. As an undergraduate, he wrote a refereed paper on African Americans in the military and since has maintained a constant interest in the changing mosaic of race and ethnicity in the United States and worldwide. He received his BA in Sociology from Northwestern University and then continued his studies with an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Schaefer’s continuing interest in race relations led him to write his master’s thesis on the membership of the Ku Klux Klan and his doctoral thesis on racial prejudice and race relations in Great Britain. He has taught sociology and courses on multiculturalism for 30 years. He has been invited to give special presentations to students and faculty on racial and ethnic diversity in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. Dr. Schaefer authored the books Racial and Ethnic Groups, eleventh edition (Prentice Hall, 2008) and Race and Ethnicity in the United States, fourth edition (Prentice Hall, 2007). He is also the author of the eleventh edition of Sociology (2009), the seventh edition of Sociology: A Brief Introduction (2008), and the third edition of Sociology Matters (2008), all published by McGraw-Hill. Schaefer coauthored Extraordinary Groups (8th edition, Worth Publications) in 2007. His articles and book reviews have appeared in many journals, including American Journal of Sociology, Phylon: A Review of
Race and Culture, Contemporary Sociology, Sociology and Social Research, Sociological Quarterly, and Teaching Sociology. He served as president of the Midwest Sociological Society from 1994 through 1995. In recognition of his achievements in undergraduate teaching, he was named Vincent DePaul Professor of Sociology in 2004 at DePaul University.
About the Associate Editor Shu-Ju Ada Cheng is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at DePaul University. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in International Studies from the University of Oregon, a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Oregon, and a BA in Spanish Language and Literature from Fu-Jen University, Taiwan. Cheng’s areas of interest include international migration, globalization, development, work, gender, and ethnography. Her recent publications include her book, Serving the Household and the Nation: Filipina Domestics and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan (Lexington Books, 2006), and an article, “Rethinking the Globalization of Domestic Service: Foreign Domestics, State Control, and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan” in Gender & Society (2003), which received both the Women of Color Caucus Essay Award from the National Women’s Studies Association and the Section on Sex and Gender Distinguished Article Award of the American Sociological Association. Cheng’s other published articles include “When the Personal Meets the Global at Home: Filipina Domestics and Their Female Employers in Taiwan,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (2004); “Contextual Politics of Difference in Transnational Care: The Rhetoric of
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Filipina Domestics’ Employers in Taiwan,” Feminist Review (2004); and “Right to Mothering: Motherhood as a Transborder Concern in the Age of Globalization,” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering (2004). Other scholarly recognition includes winning the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize (Iowa State University) for Research on Women and Politics (Project Title: Serving the Household and the Nation: Filipina Domestics and the Politics of Nationhood in Taiwan) and winning the Cheryl Allyn Miller Award (Sociologists for Women in Society) on Women and Paid Work (Paper Title: Articulating the Household and the Nation: Foreign Domestics, State Control, and National Identity in Taiwan). In addition to her scholarship, she received the university Excellence in Teaching Award from DePaul University in 2002.
About the Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim is research director at John J. Egan Urban Center at DePaul University. Kim has been teaching statistics in social sciences for the past 10 years and has taught research methods, race and ethnicity, sociology of sports, and spatial analysis. He is currently a doctoral student in sociology at University of Illinois at Chicago with a concentration in race, ethnicity, and gender. Born in Seoul, South Korea, and having grown up in a diverse neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, Kim has always been interested in the ways
in which people lived and the affect of the buildings and urban landscape on how people work and live. Upon receiving his BS in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he became a research assistant at the American Medical Association, and then a research analyst at the Riverside Publishing Company, where he worked on the development of standardized tests. During this time, Kim earned an MA in Sociology from DePaul University in Chicago, where he wrote histhesis critiquing The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, a controversial book about intelligence and its disparities by race, ethnicity, and class. Kim’s interests in quantitative research led to a research statistician position at Nielsen Media Research. His adjunct position at DePaul University as the instructor of statistics led to his current position at the Egan Center. Kim was a coeditor of and contributor to The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis (Temple University Press, 2006) and has had an active role in such community research projects as the New Communities Project and the Preservation Compact, the former funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the latter funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Urban Land Institute Foundation. Kim is on the board of directors for the Asian American Institute, the Korean American Research and Development Institute, and on the advisory board for the University of Illinois Extension.
Contributors Abu S. Abarry Temple University
Molefi Kete Asante Temple University
J. Q. Adams Western Illinois University
Mary Welek Atwell Radford University
Marina A. Adler University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Duke W. Austin University of Colorado
Gustavo Agosto-DaFonseca Baruch College, City University of New York
Abu Bakarr Bah Northern Illinois University
Michael Bernabé Aguilera University of Oregon
Damayanti Banerjee University of Western Kentucky
Benigno E. Aguirre University of Delaware
Michael Banton University of Bristol
Donna L. Akers University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Jiemin Bao University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Ben Alexander City University of New York
R. Gabriela Barajas Columbia University
Luis Alvarez University of California, San Diego
Steven E. Barkan University of Maine
Sandy Alvarez Shippensburg University
Marcellus C. Barksdale Morehouse College
Alma Alvarez-Smith Arizona State University
John Barnshaw University of Delaware
Amy E. Ansell Bard College
Robyn J. Barrus Brigham Young University
Julie E. Artis DePaul University
Abel A. Bartley Clemson University xxxv
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Victor Bascara University of Wisconsin–Madison
Karen S. Boyd University of Notre Dame
Jeanne Batalova Migration Policy Institute
Melinda Brahimi Baruch College, City University of New York
Michael M. Bell University of Wisconsin–Madison
Andrea Malkin Brenner American University
Corinne Lally Benedetto DePaul University
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Columbia University
Lois Benjamin Hampton University
Christopher George Buck Independent Scholar
Michael I. J. Bennett DePaul University
Ashley A. Buller Iowa State University
Natalie Bennett DePaul University
Meghan A. Burke Loyola University Chicago
Donald J. Berg South Dakota State University
Craig Calhoun Social Science Research Council
Brent Berry University of Toronto
Thomas Calhoun Jackson State University
Ruth Bettina Birn War Crimes and Special Investigations Enforcement Program of Canada
Gregory R. Campbell University of Montana
Kay J. Blalock St. Louis Community College Kenneth Bolton, Jr. Southeastern Louisiana University Christopher Bondy DePauw University
Julia Miller Cantzler Ohio State University Dennis Carlson Miami University Leonard A. Carlson Emory University
Heather D. Boonstra Guttmacher Institute
Deborah Carr Rutgers University University of Wisconsin
Luisa N. Borrell Columbia University
Amy E. Carreiro University of Tulsa
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. University of Minnesota
AnneMarie Cesario The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Contributors
Gary Chaison Clark University
Paul R. Croll University of Minnesota
Neil Chakraborti University of Leicester
Clark E. Cunningham University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Laura Chambers Harold Washington College
David Cunningham Brandeis University
Jerome A. Chanes Brandeis University
Heather M. Dalmage Roosevelt University
Stewart Chang California State University, Long Beach
Seif Da’Na University of Wisconsin–Parkside
Shu-Ju Ada Cheng DePaul University
Roger Daniels University of Cincinnati
Simon Cheng University of Connecticut
Wei Ming Dariotis San Francisco State University
Eric Cheyfitz Cornell University
Gary C. David Bentley College
Andrew Cho Tacoma Community College
Diane de Anda University of California, Los Angeles
Glynis Christine St. Philip’s College
Mary Jo Deegan University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Julia Chuang University of California, Berkeley
Héctor L. Delgado University of La Verne
Jack Clarke DePaul University
Rutledge M. Dennis George Mason University
Arica L. Coleman Johns Hopkins University
Meera E. Deo University of California, Los Angeles
Roberta L. Coles Marquette University
Christina Diaz DePaul University
Sharon M. Collins University of Illinois at Chicago
Nandi E. Dill New York University
Stavros T. Constantinou Ohio State University, Mansfield Campus
Elena Dingu-Kyrklund Stockholm University
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Danielle Dirks University of Texas at Austin
Abby L. Ferber University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Peter Doell Alliance & Nazarene University College
Kenneth Fidel DePaul University
Karen Manges Douglas Sam Houston State University
Gary Alan Fine Northwestern University
John F. Dovidio Yale University
Jan Fiola Minnesota State University Moorhead
Korie L. Edwards Ohio State University
Mako Fitts Seattle University
Howard J. Ehrlich The Prejudice Institute
Kathleen J. Fitzgerald Columbia College
Don Elligan Harold Washington City College
Terrence Fitzgerald Unit 4 School System, Champaign, Illinois
Brandy J. Ellison University of Notre Dame
Camilla Fojas DePaul University
David G. Embrick Loyola University Chicago
Georges Fouron Stony Brook University
J. Lynn England Brigham Young University
Samuel L. Gaertner University of Delaware
Sylvia Escárcega DePaul University
Peter Gale University of South Australia
Dionne Espinoza California State University, Los Angeles
Alma M. Garcia Santa Clara University
George J. Fachner, Jr. George Mason University
Christine Lynn Garlough University of Wisconsin–Madison
Richard P. Farkas DePaul University
Roberta Garner DePaul University
John E. Farley Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Julia Gelatt Princeton University
Joe Feagin Texas A&M University
Navid Ghani Five Towns College
Contributors
Dog˘ an Göçmen University of London
Othello Harris Miami University
Henry Goldschmidt Wesleyan University
Douglas Hartmann University of Minnesota
Angela Ann Gonzales Cornell University
Christiane Harzig Arizona State University
Harry Goulbourne London South Bank University
Lawrence Hashima California State University, Long Beach
Kimberly Goyette Temple University
Timothy Havens University of Iowa
Dipankar Gupta Jawaharlal Nehru University
Karina J. Havrilla American Sociological Association
Jamie L. Gusrang University of Connecticut
Ted Henken Baruch College, City University of New York
Miro Hacek University of Ljubljana
Max Herman Rutgers University
Shaconna Marie Haley American University
P Rafael Hernández-Arias DePaul University
J. Mark Halstead University of Huddersfield
Kim D. Hester-Williams Sonoma State University
Debra Newman Ham Morgan State University
Walter W. Hill St. Mary’s College
Steve Hamilton American University
Lynn Horton Chapman University
Chong-suk Han Temple University
Kevin G. Howard Dundalk Institute of Technology
Troy Harden Chicago State University
Evren Hosgor Lancaster University
Vinay Harpalani New York University
Alexandra Hrycak Reed College
Donna Marie Harris Warner School, University of Rochester
Matthew W. Hughey University of Virginia
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Li-Ching Hung Mississippi State University
Mary E. Kelly University of Central Missouri
Pamela Rae Huteson University of Alaska, Southeast
Michael J. Kelly Creighton University
Jenny Irons Hamilton College
Ivy Kennelly George Washington University
Gayle Y. Iwamasa DePaul University
Romana Khaoury Queens University, Belfast
Regine O. Jackson Emory University
Barbara Kim California State University, Long Beach
J. Jackson-Preece London School of Economics
Joon K. Kim Colorado State University
Cardell K. Jacobson Brigham Young University
Kiljoong Kim DePaul University
Peter Jacques University of Central Florida
Leslie C. Baker Kimmons Chicago State University
Andrew Jakubowicz University of Technology Sydney
Peter Kivisto Augustana University
Roy F. Janisch Pittsburg State University
Jennifer M. Klein DePaul University
Jeffrey C. Johnson Independent Scholar
Matja Klemencˇicˇ University of Maribor
Andrew Jolivette San Francisco State University
Lisa Konczal Barry University
Stephen Francis Jones Mount Holyoke College
Andrew G. Kourvetaris Northeastern Illinois University
Shawn Malia Kana’iaupuni Kamehameha Schools
George Andrew Kourvetaris Northern Illinois University
Diana Leilani Karafin Ohio State University
John Koval DePaul University
Maulana Karenga California State University, Long Beach
Donald B. Kraybill Elizabethtown College
Contributors
Adam Krims University of Nottingham
Xing Lu DePaul University
Glen David Kuecker DePauw University
Pat Luce-Aoelua National Office of Samoan Affairs
Kian-Woon Kwok Nanyang Technological University
Aloysius M. Lugira Boston College
Yvonne M. Lau DePaul University
Tracey Mabrey DePaul University
Mahendra Lawoti Western Michigan University
Kinuthia Macharia American University of Nigeria
Brandon C. Ledward University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Iain S. Maclean James Madison University
Matthew R. Lee Louisiana State University
Stephanie Madon Iowa State University
Cheryl B. Leggon Georgia Institute of Technology
Bernard Maegi Normandale Community College
Tracey Lewis-Elligan DePaul University
Mike A. Males Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
Jeff Libman Truman College
Theodoric Manley, Jr. DePaul University
John Lie University of California, Berkeley
Keith Andrew Mann Cardinal Stritch University
Sheryl Lightfoot University of Minnesota
Maxine L. Margolis University of Florida
Howard Lindsey DePaul University
Gerardo Marin University of San Francisco
Eric Yang Liu Baylor University
Lisa B. Markman Princeton University
James W. Loewen Catholic University of America
Derek Martin Southern Illinois University
Nancy Lopez University of New Mexico
Suzanne B. Martin University of California, Berkeley
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Martha A. Martinez DePaul University
Jennifer C. Mueller Texas A&M University
Douglas S. Massey Princeton University
Paul T. Murray Siena College
Félix Masud-Piloto DePaul University
Susan Needham California State University, Dominguez Hills
Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett DePaul University
Kumiko Nemoto Western Kentucky University
Scott Mathers Mississippi State University
Michelle Newton-Francis American University
Armand L. Mauss Washington State University
François Nielsen University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Christopher D. Maxwell Michigan State University University of Michigan
Jack Niemonen University of South Dakota
Eric Michael Mazur Virginia Wesleyan College Erin McCoy San Francisco State University Michael McCurry South Dakota State University Pancho McFarland Chicago State University Beth Frankel Merenstein Central Connecticut State University Karen L. Meyer DePaul University
Fuifuilupe ‘Alilia Niumeitolu University of California, Berkeley Casey Oberlin DePaul University Suzanne Oboler City University of New York Dina G. Okamoto University of California, Davis Michael A. Olivas University of Houston Maggie O’Neill Loughborough University
Deborah W. Meyers Migration Policy Institute
Matthew Oware DePauw University
Diditi Mitra Brookdale Community College
Judith Owens-Manley Hamilton College
Amanda Moras Dickinson College
Efren N. Padilla California State University, East Bay
Clayton Mosher Washington State University,Vancouver
Nicholas C. Pano Western Illinois University
Contributors
Vincent N. Parrillo William Paterson University
Daniel Pouesi Kin Publications
Nicholas Parsons Washington State University, Vancouver
Devyani Prabhat New York University
Anju Mary Paul University of Michigan
Kristopher Proctor University of California, Riverside
Bimal Kanti Paul Kansas State University
Bandana Purkayastha University of Connecticut
Fern M. Paul University of New Brunswick
Karen D. Pyke University of California, Riverside
Monique R. Payne-Pikus DePaul University
Ralph E. Pyle Michigan State University
Sabrina Pendergrass Harvard University
Lincoln Quillian Northwestern University
Donald D. Pepion New Mexico State University
Richard Race Roehampton University
Judith Ann Perez Fordham University
Catherine S. Ramírez University of California, Santa Cruz
Barbara Perry University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Kathryn R. L. Rand University of North Dakota
Gary Kinte Perry Seattle University
Emily Rauscher New York University
Sheila Renee Peters Fisk University
Meghan Ashlin Rich University of Scranton
Mark E. Pfeifer Hmong Studies Journal
C. Centae Richards Arizona State University
Fred L. Pincus University of Maryland, Baltimore County
James T. Richardson University of Nevada, Reno
Alexander W. Pisciotta Kutztown University
Victor Rios, Jr. College of the Desert
Caroline Plüss Nanyang Technological University
Christina Rivers DePaul University
Jack Nusan Porter Spencer Institute for Social Research
Polly Rizova Boston University
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Tom I. Romero II Hamline University
Richard T. Schaefer DePaul University
Lydia Rose DeVry University
Kyle Scherr Iowa State University
Michael J. Rosenfeld Stanford University
Traci Schlesinger DePaul University
Mark Rubinfeld Westminster College
Janet Ward Schofield University of Pittsburgh
Scott Edward Rutledge Temple University
Margaret Mackenzie Schwartz University of Iowa
Emily Ryo Stanford University
Jeremy Seekings University of Cape Town
Rogelio Saenz Texas A&M University
Hinda Seif Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Alan Saltzstein California State University, Fullerton
Duško Sekulic´ University of Zagreb
William Alfred Sampson DePaul University
Saher Farooq Selod Loyola University, Chicago
Raymond San Diego San Francisco State University
Christie A. Sennott University of Colorado at Boulder
Diane Sandage Western Illinois University
Jason Eugene Shelton Rice University
Linda Sanderson University of California, Davis
Jean H. Shin American Sociological Association
Jenniffer M. Santos-Hernández University of Delaware
Stephen J. Sills University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Paul Khalil Saucier Northeastern University
Toni Sims University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Arthur Scarritt University of Iowa
Alena Singleton Rutgers University
Peter D. Schaefer University of Iowa
Carlos Siordia Texas A&M University
Contributors
Davorn Sisavath San Francisco State University
John Stone Boston University
Emily Skop University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Madeleine R. Stoner University of Southern California
Cary Stacy Smith Mississippi State University
Claudia Tazreiter University of New South Wales
David Norman Smith University of Kansas
Bhoomi Thakore Loyola University, Chicago
Marsha Smith Augustana College
Darryl Clark Thomas Pennsylvania State University
Tom W. Smith National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago
Doug Thomson University of Toronto
William A. Smith University of Utah Sonia W. Soltero DePaul University Stephanie Southworth University of North Carolina at Charlotte Sarah Spain Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center
Shatema A. Threadcraft Yale University Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales San Francisco State University Lourdes Torres DePaul University Manuel R. Torres University of Delaware
Nancy E. Spencer Bowling Green State University
Rosemary Traoré University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Rainier Spencer University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Teruyuki Tsuji Florida International University
Gregory D. Squires George Washington University
Sirpa Tuormainen University of California, Berkeley
Richard Stahler-Sholk Eastern Michigan University
Milton Vickerman University of Colorado
Melanie Stansbury Cornell University
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz University of Virginia
Michael F. Steltenkamp Wheeling Jesuit University
Neil Vincent American University
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Willem van Vliet DePaul University
Vernon J. Williams, Jr. Indiana University, Bloomington
Elizabeth Arbuckle Wabindato University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
Frank Harold Wilson University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Mohamed Wann Baruch College, City University of New York
J. Alan Winter Connecticut College
Elisabeth I. Ward University of California, Berkeley Leland Ware University of Delaware Bijan Warner University of Chicago Judith Ann Warner Texas A&M International University
Julia M. Woesthoff DePaul University Daniel P. Wolk University of Alabama at Birmingham Andrew Woolford University of Manitoba Robert A. Wortham North Carolina Central University
Patricia Y. Warren Florida State University
Jane H. Yamashiro University of Hawai‘i at Manoa University of Tokyo
Jill Watts California State University, San Marcos
June Ying Yee Ryerson University
Briana M. Weadock American University
Grace J. Yoo San Francisco State University
Melissa F. Weiner Quinnipiac University
David Zarefsky Northwestern University
Joseph Owen Weixelman University of New Mexico
Sarah Zell University of British Columbia
Jennifer Willard Iowa State University
Assata Zerai University of Illinois
Introduction The issue of race and ethnicity is critical in contemporary life. It is a key element, whether explicitly stated or not, in debates concerning governmental leadership, health care, religion, aging, the media, and public policy in general. The issue of race and ethnicity is even more explicit in areas such as housing, music, sport, business, immigration, poverty, and antiterrorism. Variously described as a melting pot, salad bowl, and a kaleidoscope, the United States is, at the very least, a changing mosaic of people. No one could have anticipated the future when E Pluribus Unum (“out of many is one”) was adopted as the motto on the Great Seal of the United States in an act of Congress in 1782. Indeed, also central to the seal are symbols from the countries that had settled the United States to that point—England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, and Scotland. Already the presence of millions of Native American tribal people and the African slaves had been set aside. The country has since been, at different points, defined by the enslavement of Black people, the subjugation of American Indians to expand the country west, the annexation of half of Mexico, the colonization of islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the forced internment of people of Japanese ancestry, and the receiving of refugees resulting from the wars the United States fought or backed in Europe, Asia, Central America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The subject of this encyclopedia is race and ethnicity in society. This is a broad, complex topic that has undergone serious scholarly study for well over a century and was preceded by literary treatments spanning many centuries. Race and ethnicity typically refer to long-established groups with a common culture and geographic origin, often sharing a common language and religious tradition. Although the terms are used interchangeably, race tends to be associated with groups whose physical appearance is defined as
distinctive, whereas people’s ethnicity rests on cultural differences alone. Even this separation of race and ethnicity is abandoned as ethnic groups become racialized—as in the British viewing the Irish as a race apart from themselves or the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims racializing each other. Later in this introduction, we will consider how these and other terms that sometimes appear to be used with precision are actually quite inconsistent and controversial in their use. Regardless, race and ethnicity are social constructs that vary across time within any society. At one point, diversity in the United States was cast in biracial, almost caste-like terms as a Black–White issue with American Indians and Asian immigrants virtually ignored. By the end of the 20th century, observers were beginning to talk about the triracial nature of the United States or the Latinization of America, while also noting that dozens of other socially defined groups such as Pacific lslanders and hundreds of tribal groups were ignored or received less attention even though they were a significant part of society (Bonilla-Silva, 2004). Although Belgians seem to represent a distinct unified nationality since Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830, closer inspection reveals a society that represents an uneasy combination of French-speaking Walloons in the south and Dutchspeaking Flemings in the north. In a different fashion, there are religious groups such as the Amish, Hutterites, and Mormons whose distinctiveness justifies their coverage within an encyclopedia committed to covering race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity are situated at the intersection of individual social identity and the very structure of society. Who are we as individuals? Who are we as a society? (Winant, 2004). This encyclopedia has been assembled in response to these questions.
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How to Use the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicitty, and Society This encyclopedia is arranged with nearly 600 entries in alphabetical order. The individual essays range in length from 500 to 6,000 words (118 entries are more than 2,000 words), accompanied by more than 200 visuals, including photographs, tables, figures, and maps. The Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society also addresses other issues of inequality that often intersect with the primary focus on race and ethnicity. Therefore, the reader will find relevant coverage in such areas as ability status, age, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Each entry offers an overview of a particular topic with guides to additional exploration through further readings. Effort has been made to select materials generally available through college libraries and to include potentially useful Web sites. The broad area of race, ethnicity, and society is highly interconnected. Hence, each entry refers the reader to other potentially useful entries through cross-references (“See Also”) at the end of the text of each entry. Thus, one will find the entry on “Adoption” refers one to “Transracial Adoption,” which in turn refers the reader to “Racial Identity.” These cross-references supplement the alphabetical format for quick ease of location that finds such strange companions as “Lebanese Americans” next to “Lee, Spike,” and “Santería” next to “Scapegoats.” Another helpful and important feature in the encyclopedia is the Reader’s Guide section, which appears in the front matter of each volume immediately after the List of Images. This additional guide to the contents of the three volumes is organized around 18 headings, and each entry in the encyclopedia is listed in at least one of these 18 subject areas. These categories or themes identify well-represented subject areas within the encyclopedia. More significant to readers, the headings provide an additional way to guide further study. So for example, one may want to know more about immigration and therefore first look at entries such as “Immigration and Gender” and “Refugees.” However, by considering the “Immigration and Citizenship” category in the Reader’s Guide, users of the encyclopedia may see entries that they had not considered of use to them such as “Americanization,” “Ethnonational Minorities,” and “Remittances.”
Located at the end of Volume 3 are the appendices. Appendix A, “Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present,” includes historical trends, the most recent data, and projections into the future. Appendix B, “Internet Resources on Race, Ethnicity, and Society,” identifies more than 100 Web sites with a variety of perspectives on the issues contained in this encyclopedia. The strength of any reference work rests on its authorship. In these three volumes, we have brought together the insights of 376 individuals from more than 230 colleges, institutes, and organizations. To our knowledge, this is the largest number of scholars brought together to write on race and ethnicity—three times the number that produced the classic Harvard Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnicity, published a generation ago (Thernstrom, 1980). The 376 individual contributors come from fourteen countries—Australia, Canada, Croatia, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Japan, Northern Ireland, Samoa, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States, with more than 45 different states represented. Breadth of academic backgrounds is also illustrated by discipline backgrounds of the authors including African American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Communications, Criminal Justice, Gender/Women’s Studies, Geography, History, Latina/o Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Law, Media Studies, Native American/American Indian Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Scandinavian Studies, Slavic Studies, Social Work, Sociology, and Speech. In a later section, we will consider the credentials of the scholars we have assembled in greater detail. The coverage is also broad in its historical perspective, ranging from “Kennewick Man” and the “Emancipation Proclamation” to “Hip-Hop.” Biographical entries have been judiciously chosen for people who are historically important, representative of a particular period or genre, and often, scholarly contributors themselves such as Vine Deloria, Jr., Harry Kitano, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. A central part of the encyclopedia is more than 120 entries covering specific ethnic, nationality, tribal, and racial groups in the United States. Each informative essay provides basic information for each group with cross-references to related groups, pertinent concepts, and relevant historical events. The groups included are those that have had the most impact on society. Individual entries on specific groups are supplemented
Introduction
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by broader treatments on Africans in the United States, Asian Americans, Caribbean Americans, Central Americans in the United States, Latin Americans in the United States, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. Supplementing this core selection of entries are more than 100 essays looking at race and ethnicity in societies on every continent and from countries ranging from Canada to Zimbabwe as well as including a number of topics viewed from a broader global perspective such as “Colonialism,” “Diaspora,” and “Guest Workers.” Throughout the encyclopedia, but particularly in the nation and nationality entries, efforts have been made to include the latest population data. The 2007 population estimates come from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and reflect the current 2007 data from the individual countries, UN estimates, or calculations by PRB demographers (Haub, 2007).
Ehrlich (Ethnoviolence), John Farley (Discrimination in Housing), Gary Fine (Robbers Cave Experiment), Douglas Hartmann (Measuring Whiteness), Ted Henken (Immigration and Race), Peter Kivisto (Religion), Donald Kraybill (Amish), Armand Mauss (Mormons and Race), Vincent Parrillo (Italian Americans), Fred Pincus (Reverse Discrimination), James Richardsen (New Religious Movements), Jason Shelton (Malcolm X), Sonia Soltero (Bilingual Education), Gregory Squires (Blockbusting), John Stone (Comparative Perspectives of Race), Jill Watts (Father Divine Peace Mission Movement), David Zarefsky (Abraham Lincoln), and many, many others. Many of the contributors played the useful editorial role of suggesting important topics to be covered and potential experts whose contribution could be solicited. The editors gratefully acknowledge such assistance.
Scholarship: Breadth and Scope
Terminology
Some encyclopedias are written by a handful of nonexperts who assemble information from already published reference works, but the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society is the work of some of the most distinguished authorities possible who offer insight on complex topics. We have Craig Calhoun, author of the seminal essay on cosmopolitanism, writing on that topic; Michael Banton, the dean of race relations scholarship in Great Britain, writing on ethnic conflict; Douglas Massey, author of American Apartheid, writing on that concept; former American Sociological Association President Joe Feagin and Jennifer Mueller writing on White racism; Tom W. Smith, Director of NORC General Social Survey, writing on surveying intergroup relations; Maulana Karenga, the creator of Kwanzaa, writing on that internationally recognized festival; James Loewen, author of Sundown Towns, writing on that topic; and Molefi Kete Asante, who coined the term Afrocentricity, writing on that concept. The overall quality of scholarship in this reference work continues to be apparent to those with knowledge in the area of race and ethnicity. Many of the authors of the essays are acknowledged as the authorities. For example, consider entries written by Benigno Aguirre (Hurricane Katrina), Thomas Bouchard (Intelligence Tests), Roberta Coles (Family), Sharon Collins (Black Enterprise), Gary David (Arab Americans), Mary Jo Deegan (Chicago School of Race Relations), John Dovidio (Aversive Racism), Howard
We have striven to establish a common use of terms to cover the topics in the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Given the nature of the field, this is a challenging endeavor. We do acknowledge that words and categories have power and note this throughout this reference work. Ethnic and racial terminology is a complex and sensitive matter that transcends any purely scholarly discussion. We fully recognize the very real social significance it has for all the peoples discussed in this book, not to mention to the individuals who either detest any categorization or resent the many occasions they are misidentified. For example, in some contexts terms such as “nonWhite” carry deep emotional scars (South Africa), whereas in some contexts in academic writing in the United States, this term is intended to be a useful, nonpejorative term (for example as in Bonilla-Silva, 2004). To those new to the field, it may seem puzzling and arbitrary that the U.S. Census Bureau’s primary ethnic classification is “Hispanic” and “non-Hispanic” and that race includes such ambiguous geographical in origin categories as “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders” (American Anthropological Association, 1997; Office of Management and Budget, 1997). Frankly, even to scholars immersed in the field, categorization remains a challenge that is also puzzling and arbitrary. Typically, we use terminology that is most acceptable to members of groups themselves. Having said that, we recognize the utility of such
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collective terms as Asian Americans and Latinos is typically set aside in favor of more appropriate, specific descriptors, as Taiwanese Americans or Dominicans. Even what may seem as fairly specific social categories such as Italian Americans are too broad for those who self-identify as Sicilian or Genoan. Native Americans and American Indians are used interchangeably. A 1995 national survey commissioned by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau found that both the terms enjoyed relative popularity among tribal people (49% endorsed American Indian and 37% expressed preference for Native American). However overwhelming such broad umbrella terms, the individual preference, used in this encyclopedia wherever possible, is to use more specific tribal identities such as Hopi or Ojibwa (Tucker, Kojetin, and Harrison, 1996). Similarly, Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably in the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society; some have argued there are different meanings for each, but there is no consensus about what those distinctions may be. As with American Indians, greater clarity comes from using more specific identifiers than from a broad, collective term such as Hispanic or Latino. Therefore, inspection of our list of entries will find sixteen separate groups from Brazilian Americans to Salvadoran Americans encompassed by the collective social category of Latinos or Hispanic Americans, although neither term is used as a self-descriptive term by the people in their home countries in Latin America or the Caribbean (Rodriguez, 2000). Another aspect of terminology is the use of minority and majority. The use of minority is generally accepted in academic writings to describe all those groups who see themselves as distinct from the economically and politically dominant group, the majority, in terms of cultural or ethnic identity and is not intended to reflect some devaluation by outsiders. A group may also be identified as a minority even though it is in the numerical majority, as in the case of describing Black Africans in their own country during the apartheid era. In the not-too-distant past, the term mixed-race was used only in the most disparaging way by the “chosen race” to cleanse itself of those people who were of mixed descent, however defined. This has changed in many societies including the United States, where people are being encouraged to not think in terms of old, rigid compartments. The census
completed in 2000 was the first in the United States to allow for multiple categories; however, one could not self-classify as “biracial” or “multiracial” or “multiethnic.” Consequently, a significant number of entries confront the very real, and sometimes personal, issue of identity (Jones and Smith, 2001). In a similar trend to the recognition of mixed backgrounds, many individuals and scholars embrace efforts to bring separate groups together in shared endeavors. Hence, we look in detail at panethnic movements ranging from La Raza to Pan-Indian and Pan-Asian movements. Although the preceding discussion concerning terminology has focused on the United States, similar concerns about nomenclature of racial and ethnic groups are repeated throughout the world. In a study undertaken by the UN’s Statistical Division, 63 percent of 141 national censuses incorporate some form of racial, ethnic, or nationality enumeration. It is very challenging to identify common categories except through the broadest classification systems. Consider the variety of ways that “indigenous,” “native,” or “aboriginal” are employed around the world. Yet another variation in terminology is how nations may officially cluster groups treated as distinctly different in other countries. For example, some nations group ethnic with dialect groups (Singapore), whereas other nations combine caste with ethnicity (Nepal). The reader is referred to the UN Statistical Division (2003) and Ann Morning’s (2008) valuable synthesis for further insights into the complexity of terminology worldwide. Suffice it to conclude, like the authors represented in this encyclopedia, that one should exercise care in use of racial and ethnic terminologies and acknowledge as best as one can different interpretations. Finally, special caution must be used when exploring race and ethnicity in societies that are new to the investigator.
Maps and Photographs More than 90 maps specially designed in the three volumes assist the reader in getting a sense of place either of the source of nationalities or distributions of members of particular ethnic or racial groups. These illustrations offer the most accurate, recent impressions possible. Reflecting ongoing political disputes, however, boundaries are often a contentious issue. Although only small parcels of land were involved relatively speaking, Mexico and the United States did
Introduction
not finally fix their shared border until a 1970 treaty that became effective in 1977. Other borders such as India-Pakistan remain very much in dispute, and even the autonomous existence of such states as Taiwan and Tibet are in dispute. With all this in mind, one should view maps with their intended purpose— general location and key features—rather than as the final word in geopolitical disputes. Pictures speak volumes and, therefore, special care has been taken to select images to highlight topics. Rather than selecting a simple headshot of Malcolm X, for example, we undertook research to show him dining in a Harlem restaurant patronized by the Nation of Islam. Concepts that may not always be familiar to the reader are also illustrated with photographs accompanying the entries on the deficit model of ethnicity and ethnic enclave. For example, a photograph that shows Sioux tribal members staking claim to the abandoned Alcatraz Prison Island in 1969 accompanies the entry on the concept of “Red Power.” The captions themselves reflect the writing of the General Editor with assistance from entry contributors.
Acknowledgments The development of a work of a million words is truly a collaborative effort. I am particularly grateful to my editorial team. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng in her role as Associate Editor shared responsibility for developing the list of entries and identifying potential contributors. In addition, she authored seven entries herself. Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim also identified many of the contributors and provided advice on statistical and data-collection matters. He authored (or coauthored) five entries. The noteworthy credentials of my two colleagues are detailed elsewhere. Sage Publications continues to provide the academic community immeasurable reference and scholarly materials. I am most pleased that this encyclopedia is a part of this invaluable program. Publisher Rolf Janke has taken a valued personal interest in this project from the very beginning. Diana Axelsen has been the driving force on a daily basis (including many weekends) behind these three volumes. Her official title of “Developmental Editor” does not adequately describe her many roles. Kate Schroeder, with the assistance of Carla Freeman, Robin Gold, and D. J. Peck, has transformed a collaborative writing project into a unified whole. Leticia Gutierrez oversaw the Web-based
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system that managed the drafts and queries to the hundreds of scholarly participants. Finally, among all the individuals at Sage, I close by acknowledging Jerry Westby, who knows the field and was very receptive to my proposal that a part of the Sage bookshelf should be this encyclopedia. The resources of my home campus at DePaul University have been extremely important. Managing Editor Monique Billings has played an important support function to the editors. Reference Librarian Paula Dempsey has been invaluable in tracking down esoteric bibliographic entries. The Department of Sociology Program Assistant Valerie Paulson and student workers Jan Gorospe, Meaghan Kawaller, Rachel Hanes, Suzanne Hammond, and Lidia Yip assisted with manuscript preparation and production. The scholarly content rests with the several hundred authors, but others helped in a broader fashion. Jean H. Shin, in his role as Director of the Minority Affairs Program at the American Sociological Association (ASA), assisted me in contacting minority scholars to solicit their participation as authors. Similarly, I reached contributors through the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association. In closing, we note that common elements in the definition of an encyclopedia are “authoritative” and “scholarship.” We would like to close by again acknowledging the work of the individual scholars who have combined to produce this single reference source covering race and ethnicity in society.
References
American Anthropological Association. 1997. “Response to OMB Directive 15; Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting.” September. Retrieved February 27, 2006, from http://www.aaanet.org/gvt/ombdraft.htm Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2004. “From Bi-racial to Tri-racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(November):931–950. Haub, Carl. 2007. 2007 World Population Data Sheet. Washington DC: Population Reference Bureau. Jones, Nicholas and Amy Symens Smith. 2001. The Two or More Races Population: 2000. Series C2KBR/01-6. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Morning, Ann. 2008. “Ethnic Classification in Global Perspective: A Cross-National Survey of the 2000 Census Round.” Population Research and Policy Review.
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Forthcoming. Retrieved from http://sociology.as.nyu .edu/object/annmorning.html Office of Management and Budget. 1997. “Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.” Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse .gov/omb/fedreg/ombdir15.html Rodriguez, Clara E. 2000. Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Thernstrom, Stephan, ed. 1980. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tucker, Clyde, Brian Kojetin, and Roderick Harrison. 1996. A Statistical Analysis of the CPS Supplement on Race and
Ethnic Origin. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau. Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gen/ 96arc/ivatuck.pdf United Nations Statistical Division. 2003. “Ethnicity: A Review of Data Collection and Dissemination.” Unpublished document, Demographic and Social Statistics Branch, United Nations Statistical Division. Available from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/ sconcerns/popchar/Ethnicitypaper.pdf Winant, Howard. 2004. The New Politics of Race: Globalism, Difference, Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
A slavery to the economies of the northeastern United States, led to the “first emancipation.” In the southeastern United States, where chattel slavery was of enormous economic interest and also a major social institution, the outcome was different. Manumissions, which had increased during the revolutionary era because of fluctuating tobacco prices in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, halted after the introduction of the cotton gin in 1793. Many plantation owners migrated to the Southeast.
ABOLITIONISM: THE MOVEMENT Abolitionism, the attempt on the part of both African American and European American activists to eradicate the institution of slavery and all of its vestiges, was one of the most successful biracial reform movements in the history of the United States. Abolitionism not only achieved its major goal of ending slavery but also valiantly attempted to make the ideals of equality and the unity of humankind a reality. Through the efforts of many activists, it sought to provide African Americans with all of the requisite educational, civil, and political rights necessary to function as useful and valued citizens of the republic.
The New Abolitionism After 1810, the emancipation tendencies of the revolutionary era gave way to a new orientation that resulted in a revision in U.S. beliefs regarding nature, human nature, and the supernatural, resulting in the widely circulated notion that the United States was a “White man’s” country. As a consequence, the call for the “immediate emancipation” of slaves, which had been promulgated by free Black activists on the northeastern seaboard since the American Revolution, did not seem feasible, even to most abolitionists. Like most abolitionists, the Quaker Benjamin Lundy, whose weekly Genius of Universal Emancipation (1831–1835) was one of the most influential newspapers on abolitionism before William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator (1831–1865), believed that colonization was the most prudent method of engendering emancipation. Thus, only after Garrison, prodded by the wealthy Black Philadelphia sail maker James Forten, demonstrated that most Blacks opposed colonization did the movement for “immediate emancipation” become a
Early Abolitionism Beginning as early as 1688, a community of Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, engaged in a dialogue about slavery. This early challenge to slavery was indeed significant, but it was not until the period of the American Revolution, when Quakers such as John Woolman and Anthony Benezet wrote antislavery pamphlets that were distributed widely, that their goals reached fruition. In 1776, the Society of Friends organized the first Antislavery Society, and one year later it ordered its slaveholding members to emancipate their bondspersons or leave the church. The high point of early abolitionism, the main goal of which was to end the slave trade, came in 1808 when the U.S. Congress declared that it was illegal to import slaves into the country. The impact of religious and intellectual trends, along with the marginality of 1
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force to be reckoned with. During the early 1830s, Garrison’s newspaper was financed, subscribed to, and provided other means of support by Forten and other Black male and female activists. Furthermore, Garrison drew on the support of large numbers of young Whites from comfortable families who were evangelical Protestants, Quakers, and Unitarians— people in whom the ideals of equality and the unity of humankind were embedded. By 1840, however, Garrison’s American Antislavery Society, which had been founded in 1833, split. Garrison had broadened his reform movement from the single issue of slavery to universal reform, combining feminism and radical pacifism with the crusade against slavery. Influential abolitionists such as Arthur and Lewis Tappan of New York and Frederick Douglass, whom Garrison had befriended and worked with, insisted on the necessity of overt political activity. During the 1840s and 1850s, Garrison labeled the U.S. Constitution as a proslavery document and called for disunion—that is, the North’s secession from the Union—a position unpalatable to many abolitionists, including many of his staunchest supporters. Although the new White abolitionists were for the most part paternalists, they challenged not only the institution of slavery in the South but also the forces of racism and reaction in the North—especially in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, abolitionists campaigned (with a degree of success) against racial segregation in schools and public transportation and opposed prohibitions against intermarriage. Some of them sought funds for manual schools for Blacks, and a few even supported Black business ventures. But perhaps the least-known aspect of the abolitionist challenges was the attempt to dismantle the scientific racism of the American School of Ethnology. This school was composed of Samuel George Morton, Josiah Nott, George Gliddon, and Louis Agassiz, men who had rejected the universalistic theory of humankind of Enlightenment monogenesis— the theory that humankind has a single origin. Instead, they posited the theory of polygenesis, a belief in the separate origins of races. As a result, on the basis of measurements of cranial cavities and material culture, the American School of Ethnology sought to prove scientifically that non-Whites were inferior to Whites. In essence, they turned their backs on the universalistic theory of humankind of the revolutionary era thinkers such as Benjamin Rush and
John Stanhope Smith to rationalize a racism that excluded “savages” from the domain of “people.” Black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, James McCune Smith, Martin Delany, and Hosea Easton railed against the American School of Ethnology. The abolitionists commingled theological, moral, and political concerns in their discourses on race despite the fact that Christian monogenesis at that historical juncture was outside the mainstream of scientific argumentation. Bent on pursuing an older tradition of argumentation, their discourses on race have only recently been rediscovered.
The Aftermath Once the North and the South drifted into the Civil War and the bloodbath that accompanied it, the abolitionist movement attempted (with success) to transform the goal of the war from simply preserving the Union to also freeing the slaves. At the end of the Civil War, Garrison believed that his mission had been accomplished. As a consequence, he terminated the publication of his newspaper and retired. Nonetheless, many abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, sought to uplift the freed people through education in the newly founded Negro schools and financial institutions. In retrospect, the abolitionist crusade was a beginning. Yet it did not realistically treat the sources of racism—not even among its members. However, its utopian goal and dream—the emancipation of the slaves—became a reality. Vernon J. Williams, Jr. See also Abolitionism: The People; African Americans; Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Douglass, Frederick; Emancipation Proclamation; Frazier, E. Franklin; Race; Racism; Slavery; Truth, Sojourner
Further Readings
Bay, Mia. 2000. The White Image in the Black Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Dain, Bruce. 2002. A Hideous Monster of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Laurie, Bruce. 2005. Beyond Garrison. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stauffer, John. 2002. The Black Hearts of Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Abolitionism: The People
ABOLITIONISM: THE PEOPLE Abolitionists were people who fought for the eradication of slavery and the slave trade during the 18th and 19th centuries. Abolitionism was a movement to end slavery and the worldwide slave trade. Started by Quakers, the movement embraced both Whites and Blacks working together toward a common goal. This entry introduces some of the key figures in that movement.
The Quakers The initial steps toward abolitionism occurred in 1712 and initially concerned the prevention of continued importation of non-Whites into the American colonies. It was not until 1767 that abolitionism took a humanitarian position against slavery and began to assert that the trading and the enslavement of Africans were immoral. In 1783, the first antislavery movement was organized in England by the Quakers. The Quakers petitioned Parliament to end the slave trade and abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. By 1787, the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was developed largely by groups of evangelical reformers, and a network of abolitionists was created around the country. In 1775, the Quakers founded the first American abolition society, called the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This initial organization did not get national exposure until it was taken over in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin, who served as president. From this point onward, the abolition of slavery in every northern state occurred gradually with the advocacy of organizations such as the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, and the New York Manumission Society. The abolition of slavery in the northern states succeeded in 1804, the largest emancipation of slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
William Lloyd Garrison During the 1830s, with the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist movement made a radical shift. The original goal of the movement was for the gradual abolition of slavery; however, this goal was changed to one that demanded the immediate emancipation of slaves. In 1831, Garrison published
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the abolitionist journal The Liberator and publicized the movement’s goal of immediate and unconditional emancipation of slaves. It was this shift in the abolitionist movement that created great animosity between America’s slaveholders and major political and religious leaders. The objectives of Garrison’s movement were quite revolutionary because they were deemed to undermine the economic and social order of the time. Even though the abolition of slavery was successful in Great Britain and most of the European colonies, slaveholders in the U.S. southern colonies were resistant to ending slavery. Their opposition was due to the belief that the chattel system was necessary for economic prosperity and to the fact that in some states where slaves were the majority there was a fear that emancipated slaves would retaliate against the Whites. In 1833, Garrison and the Tappan brothers organized the Antislavery Society. This society was involved in publicly denouncing slavery and called for immediate action to free all slaves. By 1835, this society started a major propaganda campaign in the South and inundated the slave states with abolitionist literature, sent organizers to the North, and petitioned Congress to end slavery. The Antislavery Society’s campaign was met with strong opposition. Abolitionists in the North were attacked by mobs that would break up their meetings, destroy their printing presses, burn their antislavery pamphlets, and (in some areas) excluded them from the mail. In addition, Congress prohibited free debate so as to avoid their petitions. As antiabolitionist sentiments continued to grow, abolitionist groups used this fear to strengthen their cause. The murder of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist who was attacked and murdered by a mob when trying to defend his printing press, provided a platform to reinforce antislavery attitudes. As a result, by 1837 more than 1,300 antislavery societies with approximately 250,000 members were formed throughout the North. Even though abolitionists’ common goal was for the eradication of slavery, there was disagreement on how to achieve set goals. Garrison’s followers believed that women should be allowed to fully participate in the antislavery societies and that the movement should appeal to the morality of slaveholders to end slavery. The Garrison platform divided the cause due to the more conservative members who opposed female participation and to the more radical members who believed that moral persuasion was insufficient.
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As a result, the American and Foreign Antislavery Society was formed, and abolitionists remained divided and were never again a unified movement. In 1840, the Liberty party was another antislavery party that developed from the split within the Antislavery Society organization and whose members believed that slavery could be abolished by following a conventional political format. Although the Garrison antislavery platform was revolutionary for its time, Garrison advocated a nonviolent approach to ending slavery, whereas some members recognized the need to meet violence with violence. In 1859, one of the final acts of extreme abolition was committed by John Brown and his raid on the northern Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, where he took 60 Whites hostage in hopes of igniting an uprising of slaves.
Joining the Movement Numerous people—Black and White, men and women—participated in the abolitionist movement and dedicated their lives to eradicating slavery. Most abolitionists remained anonymous; however, a handful received national acclaim. Wendell Phillips joined the Antislavery Society and was known as abolition’s “Golden Trumpet” because of his speaking ability. Like many abolitionists, Phillips refused to eat cane sugar or wear clothes made of cotton. Henry David Thoreau was an American author and lifelong abolitionist who lectured fervently against the Fugitive Slave Law and supported the efforts of John Brown. Harriet Beecher Stowe moved with her family to Cincinnati, where her father became the first president of Lane Seminary. There she learned about slavery,
Harpers Ferry insurrection. Abolitionist efforts involved many people, from the North and South, White and Black, but one of the best known is John Brown. In 1859, John Brown and his “provisional Army of the United States” seized the military army at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the objective of arming an uprising of slaves. His efforts were immediately thwarted as federal troops arrived under the command of Robert E. Lee. Brown was taken prisoner and charged with “conspiring with slaves to commit treason and murder.” Tried and convicted, he was hanged later that year. Pictured is the interior of the engine house in the armory just before the gate was broken down by the Marines. John Brown and others are depicted with rifles and other weapons. (Shown in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, Vol. 8, No. 205, November 5, 1859) Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-132541.
Abortion
became an abolitionist, and wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. William Still was born a free Black man and worked as a mail clerk and a janitor for the Antislavery Society. He was eventually appointed as head of the General Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia, a group that assisted fugitive slaves seeking safety in the city. Eventually, Still worked to organize one of the most extensive networks of safehouses and conductors that soon became part of one of the most effective Underground Railroad systems in the country. Theodore Weld, although not well known, is considered to be the most important figure of the abolitionist movement. As a student at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Weld organized antislavery debates among the students that eventually led to his dismissal. In support of Weld and the antislavery movement, the entire student body also made requests for dismissal. Many of these former students from Lane Seminary became agents for the Antislavery Society and were central in spreading the antislavery mission throughout the North. Frederick Douglass joined Garrison’s antislavery movement, served as a lecturer for the Antislavery Society, and was responsible for talking about his life and selling subscriptions to The Liberator and the National Antislavery Standard. By the 1850s, Douglass officially split with Garrison but continued to fight vigorously against injustice toward Blacks. He played a key role in the Underground Railroad by providing shelter to fugitive slaves, and in 1852 he gave his famous “July 5th” speech questioning what the celebration of American freedom was to a slave. Sojourner Truth was born Isabella and escaped slavery in 1827. Convinced that she was led by God, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth (which means “traveling preacher”) and traveled throughout the North preaching about emancipation and women’s rights. Finally, Harriet Tubman was one of the most well-known conductors of the Underground Railroad. During a 10-year period, she made nineteen trips to the South and escorted more than 300 slaves to freedom. The contributions and talents of the many men and women in the abolitionist movement continued to press the government to end slavery. Their tireless efforts and the support of radical Republicans in Congress ultimately contributed to President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and a few years later slavery was abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Leslie C. Baker Kimmons
5
See also Abolitionism: The Movement; African Americans; Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Douglass, Frederick; Emancipation Proclamation; Frazier, E. Franklin; Race; Racism; Slavery; Truth, Sojourner
Further Readings
Blassingame, John. 1979. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press. Douglass, Frederick. 1962. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Collier Books. Grant, Joanne. 1968. Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses—1619 to the Present. New York: Fawcett Premier. Harley, Sharon. 1996. The Timetables of African-American History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in African-American History. New York: Touchstone. Healy, Joseph. 1998. Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr. 1978. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process—The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press.
ABORTION For nearly half a century, abortion has been a dominant issue in U.S. social and political discourse. Beneath the surface discussion are concerns over human life, family, sexuality, and women’s selfdetermination and role in society. At the same time, induced abortion remains an extremely common medical procedure in the United States, primarily because unintended pregnancy in the country remains pervasive. Each year, just under half of all pregnancies— some 3 million—are unplanned, and just under half of these pregnancies—1.3 million—end in abortion. At current rates, one in every three U.S. women will have an abortion at some point in her life.
Social and Legal History Abortion, both legal and illegal, has long been part of life in the United States. Indeed, the legal status of abortion has passed through several distinct phases in U.S. history. Generally permitted at the nation’s founding and for several decades thereafter, the procedure was made illegal under most circumstances in most states beginning in the mid-1800s.
6
Abortion
Yet even after the procedure was criminalized, clandestine abortion continued to be common. It is estimated that during the 1950s and 1960s, a minimum of 200,000 women each year (some estimates go as high as 1.2 million) had illegal abortions, many of which were performed under unsafe conditions. As late as 1965, illegal abortions accounted for 17% of all officially reported pregnancy-related deaths. Poor women and women of color and their families were disproportionately affected by the criminalization of abortion because even where abortion was illegal, women with financial means often had access to a safe procedure. Also, a woman could obtain a legal abortion by getting the approval of a hospital committee established to review abortion requests—an option generally available to only the well connected. A less affluent woman had few options aside from a dangerous illegal abortion. According to a series of studies on abortion in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s, the incidence of abortion was much higher among patients with private physicians than among women without their own doctors, and low-income women were more likely than more affluent women to be admitted to hospitals for postabortion care following an illegal abortion. Furthermore, one of every two childbirth-related deaths among non-White and Puerto Rican women in New York City during the 1950s was due to abortion, compared with one of every four among White women. During the 1960s, states began reforming their strict antiabortion laws so that by the time the U.S. Supreme Court acted to make abortions legal nationwide in 1973, legal abortions were already available in seventeen states (home to four of every ten women ages 15–44 years) under a range of circumstances beyond those necessary to save a woman’s life. In Roe v. Wade, the Court held that a woman’s right to decide, in consultation with her physician, whether to obtain an abortion early in pregnancy is protected constitutionally. However, states may restrict or prohibit abortions entirely after fetal viability (i.e., the physiciandetermined point in a pregnancy when the fetus could survive outside the woman’s body) unless an abortion is necessary to protect the woman’s life or health. Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that central holding. In its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, however, the Court also held that state regulations are permissible if they do not impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion. Under
these standards, the Court has allowed significant state restrictions, including requirements that patients undergo a mandatory 24-hour delay before having an abortion and that teens obtain consent for the procedure from a parent or a court, but has not gone so far as to allow a spousal notification requirement. The right to abortion, therefore, is not absolute.
Roe Major Trends in Abortion Post-R The decriminalization of abortion had a dramatic impact on women’s lives. As legal, medically safe options became available, injuries and deaths from abortions plummeted; today, early abortion—with a death rate of fewer than 1 in every 100,000 procedures— is one of the safest of all common medical procedures performed in the country. And indeed, women have been increasingly able to obtain an abortion early in pregnancy; nine of every ten abortions are now performed at or before 12 weeks’ gestation (half within 8 weeks), and the proportion of women having an abortion at or beyond 16 weeks’ gestation fell from 9% in 1973 to 5% in 2001. Not surprisingly, the U.S. abortion rate rose rapidly during the years immediately following legalization due in part to a shift from unreported illegal abortions to reported legal abortions. But legalization, of course, also meant better access for women. As the number of physicians who were trained and experienced in the procedure increased, and as a nationwide network of largely freestanding outpatient services developed, women who previously did not have access to even a clandestine abortion were able to receive a legal procedure in a medical facility. The U.S. abortion rate peaked in 1980 at 29 abortions per 1,000 women and then began to fall, dropping more steeply after 1990 until it reached a rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women in 2003—in other words, approximately 2% of women of reproductive age. Improvements in contraceptive use have been a major factor in declining abortion rates since 1980, particularly among unmarried women. The proportion of unmarried women at risk for unintended pregnancy who were using contraceptives increased from 80% in 1982 to 86% in 2002, and this increase was accompanied by a decline in unmarried women’s unintended pregnancy rate over the same period. Nevertheless, the U.S. abortion rate, although at its lowest level since 1974, remains significantly higher than the abortion rates in many other developed countries around the world.
Abortion
Persistent Disparities In the United States, both historically and today, health status and access to health care are often driven by socioeconomic circumstance, by race and ethnicity, or by both. This is as true for reproductive health as it is for health in general. Disparities across income and racial/ethnic groups are pervasive. For two decades beginning in the 1970s, however, the income and racial disparities in unintended pregnancy and abortion appeared to be closing. But recent data indicate that these disparities have widened again. Between 1994 and 2001, the unintended pregnancy rate for poor women (those with incomes below the federal poverty line) increased 29% even as it fell 20% for more affluent women (those with incomes above 200% of the poverty line). A poor woman in the United States is now nearly four times as likely as a more affluent woman to have an unplanned pregnancy. Similarly, from 1994 to 2000, while the abortion rate among higher income women decreased, the abortion rate among poor women increased. Because of this relatively higher level of unplanned pregnancy, a poor woman in the United States today is more than three times as likely as a more affluent woman to have an abortion. As a group, Black women have seen some progress during recent years: Their unintended pregnancy rate fell 3% between 1994 and 2001. Nonetheless, Black women are twice as likely as women overall to have an unplanned pregnancy. It is not surprising, then, that they are also more likely to have an abortion; each year, 5% of Black women have an abortion—more than twice the national average. The story is different for Latinas. Although the overall pregnancy rate for Hispanic women fell by 10% from 1994 to 2001, the decline was due entirely to a drop in intended pregnancies. The unintended pregnancy rate among Hispanic women remained unchanged, leading to an increase in the proportion of their pregnancies that were unintended. Not surprisingly, then, the proportion of Hispanic women who have an abortion each year (3%) is higher than the national average and three times as high as that of White women (1%). Although there is often overlap between economic status and race and ethnicity, economic status does not fully explain the differences among racial and ethnic groups. At all income levels, abortion rates for Black and Hispanic women are higher than those for White
Table 1
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Estimated Abortion Rates per 1,000 Women Ages 15 to 44 Years, by Poverty Status, According to Race and Ethnicity, 2000
Poverty Statusa Total < 100% 100–199% 200–299% ≥ 300%
White
Black
Hispanic
13 23 27 15 7
49 62 68 48 28
33 68 34 19 15
Source: Jones, Rachel K., Jacqueline E. Darroch, and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2002. “Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000–2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 34(5):226–235. Reprinted by permission of the Guttmacher Institute. a
Percentage of federal poverty level.
women (Table 1). Indeed, Black women with incomes above 200% of the poverty line have abortion rates approximately two to three times those of Hispanic women and three to four times those of non-Hispanic White women. Even when seeking an abortion, the disadvantage continues as certain groups of women are more likely than others to experience a delay in obtaining the procedure. More than half of all economically disadvantaged women experience a delay, most frequently because they need to raise money for the procedure. Not surprisingly, most economically disadvantaged women also say that they would have preferred to have their abortion earlier. Furthermore, Black women deliberate about abortion for as long as Hispanic and White women do, but Black women take significantly longer from the time they decide to have an abortion to the time they obtain one, even when controlling for age, marital status, and income.
Enduring Controversy Abortion remains an emotionally charged and politically divisive issue in the United States. For some, the act of abortion is simply immoral and tantamount to murder. For others, the right to abortion is a foundation for women’s self-determination over their bodies and their lives and is critical to women’s equality. The reasons women give for deciding to terminate a pregnancy, however, underscore the complexity of the decision. Six of every ten women who have an abortion
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Acculturation
are already parents. More than half say that they want a child or another child at a later point in their life. Most cite concern or responsibility for someone else as a factor in their decision. During the years immediately following nationwide legalization, the primary focus of abortion opponents was to overturn Roe by persuading Congress to pass a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution that would grant full personhood to the fetus from the moment of fertilization. When that legislative strategy failed, the issue of abortion’s basic legality was relegated to the back burner in favor of an “incremental” approach still seen today—withdrawing public funding and otherwise restricting access to the procedure—aimed at changing public opinion about the legitimacy of abortion. Since then, a latticework of abortion law—codifying, regulating, and limiting whether, when, and under what circumstances a woman may obtain an abortion—has developed. For example, thirty-two states and the District of Columbia prohibit the use of state funds to pay for all or most medically necessary abortions for Medicaid enrollees except in those cases where federal funds are available—where the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Twenty-four states require a woman seeking an abortion to wait a specified period of time, usually 24 hours, between when she receives counseling and the procedure is performed. Thirty-four states require either parental consent or parental notification before a minor is permitted to have an abortion. The extent to which these restrictions block substantial numbers of women from actually obtaining abortions is unclear. Although studies have shown that laws prohibiting the use of public funds for abortion force some indigent women to carry their unintended pregnancies to term, the evidence that restrictions such as waiting periods and mandatory parental involvement have a significant impact is less compelling. What is clear, however, is that restrictions on abortion access make abortion more costly—financially and in terms of women’s health and safety—as the resulting delays lead to more expensive and less safe procedures. Moreover, restrictive abortion policies fall hardest on poor women and women of color, who are already disadvantaged by society in a host of other areas of their lives, including their access to the information and services necessary to prevent unplanned pregnancy in the first place. Heather D. Boonstra
See also Adoption; Family; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Health Disparities; Sexuality; “Welfare Queen”
Further Readings
Boonstra, Heather B., Rachel B. Gold, Cory L. Richards, and Lawrence B. Finer. 2006. Abortion in Women’s Lives. New York: Guttmacher Institute. Finer, Lawrence B. and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2006. “Disparities in Rates of Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 38:90–96. Jones, Rachel K., Jacqueline E. Darroch, and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2002. “Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000–2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 34:226–235. Luker, Kristin. 1985. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mohr, James C. 1978. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Nelson, Jennifer. 2003. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press.
ACCULTURATION Acculturation refers to the process by which people adopt a new culture. Usually, this process is accompanied by people’s distancing themselves from their original culture. Acculturation can be seen as occurring along a continuum starting with modest acceptance of the new culture through acquiring some knowledge of the language and customs. With more complete acculturation, people speak the language flawlessly without accent, participate in the accepted religious practices, and carry out other traditions—from sports to food to the holidays—of the new society. It is important to understand that acculturation is generally a one-way process. Individuals or ethnic groups alter their lifestyle, but the dominant or new host society remains unchanged. It is not a social process between equals. Typically, those undergoing acculturation are immigrants, but it can also include indigenous people such as the American Indians, the First Nations of Canada, and the Aboriginal people of Australia. It is a process also experienced by those populations forcibly transferred such as slaves.
Adoption
Acculturation is regarded a part of the larger process of assimilation, where one takes on the total identity of the new society. In this context, acculturation is referred to as cultural assimilation, with other components of assimilation involved in entering the everyday social life of society (structural assimilation) and marrying freely with other societal members (marital assimilation). Issues of social identity arise as acculturation continues. Do the people taking on the cultural characteristics of the dominant culture begin to view themselves even marginally as members of the new society? Being of two worlds but being comfortable in neither is a typical experience of the children of immigrants. Although acculturation may reduce hostility from the host society, which sees newcomers as different, it is not without negative social consequences. For example, research shows that immigrants often encounter health problems as they acculturate, leaving behind old health networks and confronting the private pay system of medical care in the United States. The outcome is that the health of immigrants often deteriorates. Interestingly, this also occurs with Puerto Ricans, who are citizens when they arrive and obviously do not experience as much culture shock as do other immigrants. Scholars have looked at the implications for infant mortality of migration from Puerto Rico to the United States. Their analysis showed that children of migrants have lower rates of infant mortality than do children of mainland-born Puerto Rican women. This means that babies of Puerto Rican mothers who are born in the United States are more likely to die than are babies of mothers who migrated from Puerto Rico. Why does this happen? Immigrants generally are still under the protection of their fellow travelers. They are still networked with other immigrants and the culture in which they were raised, and these other immigrants assist them in adapting to life in the United States. However, as life in a new country continues and the acculturation process persists, these important social networks break down; people learn to navigate the new social system—the health care system in this example. Research indicates that Puerto Ricans in the United States, regardless of how recently they arrived, still experience better health than do those in Puerto Rico. The health care problems of second-generation immigrants are widely recognized. Indeed, in 2007, the Mexican government initiated health care outreach from its consulate
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offices for its countrymen and -women in the United States who found it difficult to navigate health care in their new country. Acculturation during the early 1900s was regarded as a uniformly positive outcome under the naive assumption that the U.S. “melting pot” welcomed all new arrivals without much difficulty. Today, research documents the importance of maintaining ties to one’s first culture as one takes on the language and values of the new society. Many of the policy debates today in the United States, such as the one involving bilingual education and English as the official language, reflect tensions over acculturation. In other countries, the issue of acculturation has manifested in other ways such as the debate in France over Muslim school children wearing headscarves in the classroom. Richard T. Schaefer See also Americanization; Assimilation; Australia, Indigenous People; Bilingual Education; Dawes Act of 1887; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Dillingham Flaw; Double Consciousness; English Immersion; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Ethnocentrism; France; Marginalization; Melting Pot; Third-Generation Principle; Veil
Further Readings
Alonso-Zalvadar, Ricardo and Anna Gorman. 2007. “Mexican Consulates Offer Healthcare Help.” Los Angeles Times, May 31, A1, A24. Landale, R. S. Oropesa and Bridget K. Gorman. 2000. “Migration and Infant Death: Assimilation or Selective Migration among Puerto Ricans?” American Sociological Review 65:888–909. Lara, Marielena, Cristina Gramboa, M. Iya Kahramanian, Leo S. Morales, and David E. Hayes Bautista. 2005. “Acculturation and Latino Health in the United States: A Review of the Literature and Its Sociopolitical Context.” Pp. 367–397 in Annual Review of Public Health. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. Newman, William M. 1973. American Pluralism: A Study of Minority Groups and Social Theory. New York: Harper & Row.
ADOPTION Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a family other than the child’s birth parent(s). Adoption requires the severing of parental
10
Adoption
Family with five adopted, Russian-born children. Adoption may involve crossing ethnic, racial, religious, or linguistic boundaries. Kim (adoptive father at left) and Carol (adoptive mother at right) Cormany pose on their porch with their five adopted Russian-born children. In 2000, 13% of all adopted children in the United States were foreign born. Source: Photo by Lloyd Wolf for the Bureau of the Census.
rights and responsibilities of the biological parents and placing those rights and responsibilities with the adoptive parent(s). After the adoption is finalized, there is no legal difference between biological and adopted families or between biological and adopted children. As adoptive families have shared in interviews, the decision to adopt brings with it numerous issues and challenges as well as great pleasure and joy. Adopting a child of another race, ethnicity, or culture adds additional elements for which to prepare and consider. Modern adoption laws have been designed with the best interests of the children in mind—to find them homes—not the best interests of the adults who intend to adopt. This entry reviews the legal process involved in adoption, reasons for adoption, and the history of adoption in the United States. Today, adoptions can be conducted privately between birth parents and adoptive parents, between independent agencies and individuals, and between public agencies (e.g., a state’s child protective services) and individuals. Adopted persons may be infants or older children, may be adopted singly or as part of a sibling group, and may come from the local area or from other states or countries. Adoptive parents may be married couples, same-sex couples, or single adults who have no children or may parent other children. Adoptive parents have been, and continue to be, primarily U.S. and European citizens who
identify as Caucasian. Guidelines as to the requirements of potential adoptive parents are provided by states, countries, and individual adoption agencies. Adoptions occur for a number of reasons. Many children are placed for adoption because their biological parents decide that they are unable to care for them adequately. In some countries, where single motherhood is considered as scandalous or unacceptable, a woman in this situation may make an adoption plan for her infant, whereas others may come under financial, societal, religious, or familial pressure to choose adoption for their children. In some cases, children are abandoned at orphanages so that they can be safely placed for adoption. Some biological parents involuntarily lose their parental rights; this usually occurs when the child is placed in foster care due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Eventually, if the birth parents cannot resolve the problems that caused or contributed to the harm of their child, a court may terminate their parental rights and the child may become available for adoption. Kinship Care is a program designed to help support children who reside outside of their own homes by placing them with relatives. This supports the concept that children residing with family members, rather than in foster homes, may alleviate family stress or temporary familial problems. The main reason for adopting varies from one country to the next, depending largely on social and legal structures. Infertility of one or both partners, a lack of a partner of the opposite sex, and the avoidance of inheritable diseases are reasons reported by potential adoptive parents. In many Western countries, stepparent adoption is the most common form of adoption as people choose to strengthen a new family following divorce or the death of a parent. Some couples choose adoption for “humanitarian” reasons such as concerns about overpopulation and the belief that children in need of families should take precedence over biological reproduction. Whatever the reason that potential parents come to adoption, as a group they believe that adoption is a valid and positive way to create a family. The history of adoption has followed a chronology that included key turning points. Considered as some of these landmark moments are the foundation of social work schools, adoption agencies, and organizations of social welfare workers (e.g., the New York School of Applied Philanthropy in 1904, the Spence Alumni Society in 1908, the National Association of Social Workers in 1955), the creation of democratic
Adoption
alliances and government agencies designed to investigate child welfare (e.g., the U.S. Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor in 1912, the Child Welfare League of America in 1921, the UN Assembly that adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959), the passing of acts created to define standard setting for adoption policy in the United States (e.g., the Social Security Act of 1935, the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997), and the creation of policies that respect intercountry adoptions and support the rights of foreign-born adopted persons (e.g., the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1961, the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children in 1993, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000). Historically, indigent children were sent to public institutions or orphanages until they could be “put out” as indentured servants, apprentices, or farmhands. During the early 19th century, however, several variables— including economic conditions, population size, and the efforts of social reformers—helped to change society’s attitude toward adoption and to make children in need of families available for adoption. Private agencies were established and began to place children in homes where they would become legal family members. Private adoption acts grew to ensure the legal status and inheritance rights of adopted children. Following World War I, the sharp drop in population caused by the war and the influenza epidemic, coupled with the development of commercial baby formula, set the stage for a dramatic increase in adoptions. Most were conducted in secret, and “closed” adoptions became the norm. At this time, many adopted persons were told that they were their parents’ biological children. It was thought that this secrecy helped children to bond with their new families and to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. By the mid-1950s, the demand for healthy infants began to exceed the number available. Families in the United States adopted children from the war-torn areas of Europe, Vietnam, and Korea, and the majority of children were placed with Caucasian families. As the number of American racial/ethnic minority children without families increased over time, domestic adoption agencies began placing African American, Native American, and Hispanic children with Caucasian families who longed for children in their homes or who were reaching out to children in need. The practice of placing a child of one racial/ethnic
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group with adoptive parents of another racial/ethnic group is commonly referred to as transracial or transcultural adoption, and for many people it continues to be a controversial topic. During the 1970s, “open” adoptions, in which adoptive and birth parents are known to each other, became more accepted. Since the end of the 20th century, adoptive parents have increasingly turned to transracial and international adoptions from more than 50 different countries, with the greatest clusters from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The number of older “special needs” children awaiting adoption, both in and outside of the United States, has skyrocketed. These children often come from backgrounds of abuse and neglect, and finding appropriate placements for them is one of the most pressing concerns in child welfare today. Adoption rights organizations have long focused on issues such as the adopted person’s right to access his or her birth information, including birth family medical information. They also focus on improving classroom sensitivity to adoption issues, encouraging school systems to steer away from lessons such as those about family trees and tracing genetic connections. The language used in adoption is changing and evolving as well to more honest and positive wording, breaking with the use of negative or inaccurate language describing adoptive individuals, birth parents, and the adoption experience. Andrea Malkin Brenner See also Child Development; Family; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Multiracial Identity; One-Drop Rule; Race; Social Work; Transracial Adoption
Further Readings
Alstein, Howard and Rita Simon. 1990. Intercountry Adoption: A Multinational Perspective. New York: Praeger. Carp, E. Wayne. 2004. Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Herman, Ellen. 2005. Timeline of Adoption History. The Adoption History Project. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/timeline.html Jones, Merry Bloch. 1993. Birthmothers: Women Who Relinquish Babies for Adoption Tell Their Stories. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review. Melosh, Barbara. 2002. Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Affirmative Action in Education
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
IN
EDUCATION
Since the introduction of the term in Executive Order 10479, signed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, affirmative action has occupied a place of great hope, uncertainty, and debate within U.S. society. Over the decades, support for affirmative action has grown and waned as political currents have changed. After numerous U.S. Supreme Court decisions have shaped affirmative action policies, the future of the program is uncertain. As a result, many states have begun to develop alternative plans in their efforts to ensure diversity within schools. This entry defines affirmative action, summarizes the debates over its implementation, examines related federal court decisions, and outlines possible alternatives.
Defining Affirmative Action There is no clear agreed-on definition of affirmative action. For the purposes of this selection, George E. Curry’s definition, based on a report of the Civil Rights Commission, is used. Affirmative action, then, consists of “policies and programs that permit the consideration of race, ethnicity, national origin, or sex in awarding of contracts, employment, or university admissions in order to provide opportunities to a class of qualified people who have been historically or actually denied those opportunities, and to prevent further discrimination in the future.” Originally designed to combat discrimination against African Americans, affirmative action programs have been expanded to consider other ethnic groups, including Latinos and Native Americans, as well as other minority groups such as women. Affirmative action can best be seen as a continuum of policies ranging from strict quotas that make race or gender the deciding factor to policies that indirectly increase inclusion without taking race or sex into account.
The Debate Almost since its inception, affirmative action has been a source of great controversy within the United States. Opponents of affirmative action usually take one of three approaches, focusing on (a) unfairness to White males, (b) unfairness to minorities, or (c) general questions of unfairness. Supporters of the unfairness to White males approach claim that the policy is reverse discrimination because it denies qualified Whites the
same opportunities as are available to minorities. Those who support this argument often use the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origins, and (later) gender as proof of the unconstitutionality of the policy. In addition, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fifteenth Amendment are cited to contest affirmative action policies. Advocates of the second approach examine how affirmative action policies have a negative impact on the minorities they are designed to assist. They claim that the policy is detrimental for minorities because it puts underqualified minorities in institutions where they do not have the skills to be successful. Hence, the programs set minority students up for failure. Support for this argument can be seen in the lower graduation rates of certain minority groups such as African Americans. Another argument is that affirmative action takes away minority motivation for working hard. This position maintains that minorities will not try as hard because they know that they will get into colleges because of their minority status. Similar to the motivation issues, some argue that minorities will become demoralized because they know that they are not in college because of their own merit but rather because of their minority status. Also, affirmative action could increase racial tensions on campus because Whites may feel resentment because of the preferences given to minority groups. The third and final view of opponents of affirmative action tends to deal with more general concerns about fairness. One position maintains that such policies tend to benefit the most advantaged members of minority groups—the middle class. Opponents of affirmative action claim that this group would be successful without such policies; hence, the program does not really benefit anyone. Another objection is that affirmative action policies are designed to compensate for past discrimination. Many argue that it has been more than 40 years since the Civil Rights Movement when discrimination became illegal, and they wonder when the country will have paid enough for its past errors. In a related argument, some claim that if affirmative action is designed to compensate for discrimination, applicants should be required to demonstrate that they have been discriminated against and minority status should not be sufficient proof of discrimination. Finally, opponents maintain that affirmative action is now applied to too wide a group. They contend that the affirmative action policies originally
Affirmative Action in Education
designed to assist African Americans now apply to a wider range of groups, such as new immigrants from Latin America, who do not cope with the historical legacy of discrimination that African Americans face. Thus, opponents maintain that affirmative action has lost its relevance and needs to be discontinued. In contrast to opponents of the program, advocates of affirmative action focus on how such policies have increased equality in the United States. According to supporters of affirmative action, such policies are crucial to education because diversity enhances the learning experience by providing a diversity of opinions and life experiences. In addition, given the growing diversity of the United States, being in a diverse campus environment prepares students to work and live in a more ethnically diverse environment. Another point that advocates of affirmative action present is the belief that discrimination continues to exist, so such programs are still needed. Those who support this opinion point to statistics demonstrating that African Americans and Latinos continue to be overrepresented among the poor, that women continue to make less money than men, and that African Americans are less likely to be called back for a second job interview, or even given a first interview, if they have ethnic-sounding names. In addition, supporters note the continued preference given to legacy applicants—the children and grandchildren of alumni—in college admissions, a preference that disproportionately benefits Whites. Thus, they maintain that affirmative action policies are needed to ensure a level playing field. Advocates of affirmative action also point out the problems of the opposition’s perspective. For example, using a sample of academically selective colleges, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok demonstrated, in their classic book The Shape of the River, that affirmative action policies are not a matter of choosing unqualified minorities over qualified Whites but rather one of giving minorities preference within a pool of qualified candidates. These authors also found that the selective colleges that practice affirmative action did not have greater racial tensions and that White students believed that diversity on the college campus was important and added to the learning environment of the institution. With regard to affirmative action hurting the recipients, Bowen and Bok found that African Americans at elite colleges had higher graduation rates than did those at nonselective colleges. They also discovered that the long-term benefits of affirmative action policies
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are positive; African Americans who graduate from elite colleges have higher salaries than their counterparts from less selective institutions and also contribute more to their communities. Based on these findings, the authors concluded that affirmative action does not have the negative consequences that opponents of the policy suggest it has.
Federal Decisions Although each educational institution has its own affirmative action policy, the federal courts have been the primary entity to set the acceptable boundaries of these policies. In this way, the Supreme Court has been one of the most influential bodies with regard to setting affirmative action policies. The first relevant case was the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. This case overruled the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which had found that having separate facilities for African Americans and Whites was constitutional so long as the facilities were equal. The Brown decision found that having separate facilities, especially within education, was inherently unequal. This case sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, which ended legal segregation in the United States. The Brown decision is important because it was the first case that called for students of different ethnic origins to attend school together. Subsequent Court cases would set the parameters of affirmative action policies. The next important case considered by the Supreme Court was Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In this case, Allen Bakke argued that he was denied admission to the medical school at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), because less qualified minorities were admitted. The UC Davis medical school had a policy of setting aside 16 of its 100 medical school spots for minorities. In 1978, the Court found that setting aside a specific number of positions for minorities was unconstitutional. Although it was OK to have percentage goals for minority enrollment, this case outlawed the use of quotas— having a set number of positions for minorities. As a result, schools needed to revise their affirmative action policies to ensure that quotas did not exist. After the Bakke decision, the Supreme Court was relatively silent about affirmative action for the following couple of decades. But during the late 1990s, more affirmative action cases made their way through the federal court systems. As result, different federal districts ended up having opposing findings. In
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Hopwood v. Texas, decided in 1998, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that giving racial preferences in higher education was unconstitutional. It found that using preferences to ensure a diverse student body was not a sufficient rationale for the consideration of race. The Supreme Court decided not to hear the case, causing the ruling to stand. In this way, the consideration of race was outlawed in the states that fell under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In contrast, in 2000, The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Smith v. University of Washington, found the diversity rationale of the admissions policy of the University of Washington Law School was constitutional. The Supreme Court also declined to hear this case. Thus, the legality of affirmative action varied from state to state. In 2003, the Supreme Court finally weighed in on affirmative action and set the parameters for the entire country. In 2003, the Court handed down two rulings. In the first case, Gratz v. Bollinger, the Court found that the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions policy, which awarded points to members of ethnic minority groups, was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that such a system was too mechanistic because it did no individual assessment and did not take a holistic approach. In contrast, in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court found that the University of Michigan’s law school policy of considering race among a variety of factors when evaluating each applicant to ensure diversity was constitutional. Based on these decisions, the consensus seemed to be that diversity in higher education was adequate justification for affirmative action policies so long as race was only one of many considerations, with no specific value attached, when evaluating the entire application of each person. In addition, Justice O’Connor, who was the deciding vote, stated in her opinion that in approximately 25 years the use of racial preference would no longer be necessary to ensure diversity.
Alternatives to Affirmative Action Even before the Supreme Court’s decisions in 2003, many states had passed referenda outlawing the consideration of race within college admissions and employment. For example, in 1996, California passed Proposition 209 outlawing the consideration of race by the state. Washington passed a similar initiative,
and the governor of Florida outlawed the consideration of race by executive order. In response to the decline in admissions of minorities in state universities, some states have developed percentage plans. Texas was the first state to develop a percentage plan in 1997. Texas instituted a law that admitted the top 10% of all high schools’ graduating senior classes to the state public university system. Shortly after that, Florida decided to admit the top 20% of graduates and California decided to admit the top 4%. Because of the racial segregation that continues to exist in the United States, it is easy to identify predominantly African American or Latino schools. Advocates of percentage plans claim that by admitting the top percentage of each class regardless of test scores, ethnic diversity will be maintained. Opponents of this program state that the policy will work only so long as racial segregation continues. In addition, they state that many of these policies do not guarantee admissions to the state’s flagship schools such as the University of Texas at Austin. Hence, the increase in minority enrollment may be limited to second-tier schools and not affect the first tier. Finally, opponents claim that the students who are admitted might not be able to do the work required to complete college successfully. In this way, they are being set up for failure. Another alternative to race-based affirmative action is class-based affirmative action. According to this approach, because minorities are overrepresented among the poor, they will disproportionately benefit from policies that give preference to applicants from poorer economic backgrounds. In addition, because there are no laws related to class preference, there is no concern about the constitutionality of such policies. Objections to this alternative highlight the fact that when class is controlled, ethnic minorities have lower test scores than do Whites. Hence, class-based affirmative action policies would benefit many more Whites than ethnic minorities. Also, even if poorer ethnic minorities are admitted, they might not have the skills necessary to complete college successfully. A third and final alternative is the lottery-based system of admissions. This approach calls for setting a cutoff test score and then deciding admissions based on a lottery. In this way, so long as students meet the minimum requirement, they can potentially be admitted to the school. The key is making sure that the cutoff point is low enough that a sufficient pool of
Affirmative Action in the Workplace
minority applicants will be eligible. The primary critique of this approach focuses on the inefficiency of the model. Using a lottery-based system would still result in many more Whites being eligible and, therefore, being more likely than minorities to be chosen. Thus, such a policy would result in fewer minorities being admitted than is the case under current affirmative action policies. Clearly, each of the alternatives to affirmative action has its limitations, but so do most affirmative action policies themselves. Affirmative action has been a “hot button” issue in the United States for nearly half a century and will probably continue to be one. There are valid arguments on both sides of the debate, and neither side seems willing to give in. Yet given the recent Supreme Court decision and the election of two conservative Supreme Court justices since the Michigan cases, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alioto, the future of affirmative action appears to be dim. If diversity is important to higher education, alternative policies need to be developed to attain this goal. Monique R. Payne-Pikus See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination; Educational Performance and Attainment; Grutter v. Bollinger; Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Pipeline; Plessy v. Ferguson
Further Readings
Bowen, William G. and Derek Bok. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Curry, George E. 1996. “Introduction.” Pp. xiii–xv in The Affirmative Action Debate, edited by George E. Curry. New York: HarperCollins. Elliott, Eul W. and Andrew I. E. Ewoh. 2005. “Beyond Gratz and Grutter: Prospects for Affirmative Action in the Aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Michigan Decisions.” Review of Policy Research 22:541–553. Grofman, Bernard and Samuel Merrill. 2004. “Anticipating Likely Consequences of Lottery-Based Affirmative Action.” Social Science Quarterly 85:1447–1468. Harper, Shannon and Barbara Reskin. 2005. “Affirmative Action at School and on the Job.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:357–379.
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Naff, Katherine C. 2004. “From Bakke to Grutter and Gratz: The Supreme Court as a Policymaking Institution.” Review of Policy Research 21:405–427.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE WORKPLACE Affirmative action is a term that refers to institutional programs or policies designed to create equal opportunities for women and racial minorities in areas where they have traditionally been denied access. Although the term itself is relatively new, the idea behind the intent of the concept is not. For much of U.S. history, women and minorities were relegated to second-hand citizenship and treated as inferior beings in comparison with White men. They were denied access to employment, educational, political, and even social opportunities that were typically held by and reserved for White men. Even though much has changed during the past 50 or so years, affirmative action continues to draw major debates as to its usefulness during the post–civil rights era. This entry describes the historic context of discrimination, the advent of affirmative action, and the more recent retreat from these advances.
Founding Principles The notion that all people are equal, imbued with certain inalienable rights, and should be treated fairly and justly is relatively new in the United States. Of course, one could point to the U.S. Constitution or, in particular, the Bill of Rights, and make the claim that justice and fairness have always been the centerpiece of U.S. society, relying on the fact that “We the people” begins the Constitution. In addition, the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) specifically mentions equality and inalienable rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Despite these affirmations, a number of contemporary race scholars say the U.S. Constitution is a racial document that historically helped to set the stage for the development of a racist society. Of course, the Founding Fathers were also sexist. Women had few rights compared with men in the early history of the United States. Hence, the Founding Fathers had probably always assumed White male supremacy.
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President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, paved the way for the dismantling of slavery in the United States. Established following the Civil War, the Freedman’s Bureau represents one of the earliest forms of affirmative action by the U.S. government to give some measure of assistance to newly freed slaves in the form of clothing, rations, and medicine. The Freedman’s Bureau also participated in employment negotiations between laborers and their employers. However, Whites continued to maintain social, economic, and political control through the use of Jim Crow legislation, highly racialized scare tactics, and a court system openly hostile to minorities.
Change Begins White males were able to thwart an increasing women’s suffrage movement, which would not gain momentum until the early 20th century. Only with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on August 26, 1920, were women finally permitted to vote. During the early 1930s, federal court decisions ordered an end to overt racial segregation at all-White universities. One of the earliest attempts at affirmative action during the 20th century came in the form of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, better known as the Fair Employment Act. Under pressure from a massive protest organized by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (led by Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and A. J. Muste), Roosevelt signed the executive order on June 25, 1941, only months before the start of World War II. It prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense and other government-related industries. The Fair Employment Act was the first federal law prohibiting discrimination in the United States. It established the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, headed by the Office of Production Management, to investigate discrimination violations and take appropriate action. Although the Fair Employment Act was government’s acknowledgment of the need to address racial issues, Executive Order 8802 carried no punitive measures for companies that did not comply. Roosevelt’s intent in creating the executive order was to curtail protests and strikes so as to ensure the production of military weapons and supplies as the United States prepared for war.
Nonetheless, the executive order served as a precedent for future presidential orders dealing with discrimination in the workplace.
The War Years As World War II began to become inevitable, the idea of the United States as a great big “melting pot” became a central theme for a government trying to unite its people to a common cause. World War II also created a new set of dilemmas for businesses that had lost the majority of their workforces to the war. As men were being shipped off to fight overseas, many companies needed to use more women laborers as well as minority and immigrant male workers who were unable or ineligible to serve in the armed forces. Thus, record numbers of women and minorities were given the opportunity to enter into the U.S. labor force and into jobs that were previously dominated by White men. Nevertheless, although World War II provided unprecedented opportunities for women and minorities to obtain better paying jobs than they previously had, racial and gender barriers were not erased and discrimination against women and minorities continued, albeit on a smaller scale than before. The end of World War II signaled a return to the White male supremacy ideals that had been a feature of U.S. society since long before the American Revolution. Along with increased blatant and overt racial and sex discrimination came racial hostility not only from White males but also from the educational, political, and court systems, all of which were composed of White males. The country’s melting pot was an exclusive club, and mostly excluded from this club were Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and some dark-skinned European groups. Around the same time, the U.S. government was busy supporting a large political campaign designed to get women out of the workforce and back into their homes.
The Civil Rights Era In the 1954 milestone case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that denying education to anyone, regardless of race, was unconstitutional. Beyond declaring school segregation illegal, the case led to more equitable conditions in areas beyond education. This significant time of change in U.S. history is called the
Affirmative Action in the Workplace
civil rights era. Along with changes in the law favoring women and minorities, laws were also allowing at least token numbers of immigrants into the United States, some from countries whose people had previously been barred from immigration or admitted only in limited numbers. The late 1940s and early 1950s were also times of strife. Increased racial riots and frequent protests created uncomfortable situations for many White men. The social and political movements of many minority groups posed a real challenge to the political, cultural, and social structures in the United States. But although the riots and protests against racial and gender discrimination were effective tools for creating social change, real progress came about as a result of changes in the legality of racial and sex discrimination. These legal changes forced businesses to adopt new tactics when it came to dealing with minorities and women both as customers and as employees. The biggest change for many businesses came about with the ratification of Civil Rights Act of 1964 that (a) enforced the right to vote, (b) let federal courts provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, and (c) authorized federal lawsuits to protect rights to public facilities and public education. The act also extended the term of the Commission on Civil Rights, charged with preventing discrimination in federally assisted programs, and established the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity. Of particular interest to businesses is Title VII, an equal employment opportunity clause that prohibited employers, labor organizations, and employment agencies from discriminating based on an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. For many companies, Title VII (along with other laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) posed serious threats to the White male power structure present in corporate America. Because of the law, corporate businesses faced legal ramifications for racial and sex discrimination. Before the Civil Rights Act, most businesses freely and openly discriminated against women and minorities, although record numbers were still being employed after the war. Their jobs, however, tended to be menial and low paying with few opportunities for advancement. In fact, it was not uncommon for employers seeking white-collar workers to specify
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that they were interested only in Protestant or Nordic applicants. Minorities and women were denied access to many jobs. Skilled labor unions (e.g., American Federation of Labor), which represented better opportunities than did nonskilled unions (e.g., Congress of Industrial Organizations) for those seeking managerial promotions, often excluded women and minorities. Reserved for White men were the managerial and executive positions of a company, a social incubator that helped them to maintain their social status, their White privilege, and their exclusive power.
Affirmative Action Arrives Although these laws barred discrimination, they did not require any positive steps toward a more equitable society. The term affirmative action was first used by President John F. Kennedy in his Executive Order 10925 (signed March 6, 1961) to refer to a measure designed to achieve nondiscrimination. The executive order established a President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, which was charged with ensuring that discrimination did not occur in government jobs based on race, creed, color, or national origin. Most of the affirmative policies under Executive Order 10925 came in the form of written directives toward government agencies to send yearly reports to the president in regard to specific actions that were taken to ensure equal employment opportunities. Although the term affirmative action was first used in government employment, it became widely implemented in other areas such as education, civil and public employment, and organizations that wanted to (at least overtly) create unique opportunities for women and minorities seeking a piece of the “American dream.” In some cases, affirmative action policies included setting aside quotas for women and minorities. However, most affirmative action programs established guidelines to expand opportunities for women and minorities in the workplace. According to philosopher and race expert Cornel West, the fundamental purpose of affirmative action was to disrupt the networks of privileged White men who held the best jobs and the most influential positions. Thus, affirmative action was not simply a means by which women and minorities could gain access to better paying jobs and higher level positions; it was also a counter to the continuing legacy of White male supremacy.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson justified the use of affirmative action programs in his speech, titled “To Fulfill These Rights,” at Howard University on June 4, 1965. He said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race, and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” Affirmative action began to receive widespread attention during the late 1960s to early 1970s with Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 (signed September 24, 1965) establishing a set of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action guidelines for federal contractors regarding race, color, gender, religion, and national origin. Along with Executive Order 10925 signed by President Kennedy, administration and enforcement were assigned to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), with both orders serving as mechanisms to reduce barriers to women and minorities in both private and public employment. New programs were added and old ones were renewed throughout the 1970s because the Nixon and Ford administrations were active supporters of affirmative action and other policies that promoted equal opportunity, a strategy that some critics thought allowed the Republican party to better connect with an expanding Black middle class. President Richard M. Nixon’s administration created a new set of policies that required all affirmative action programs to include “minority and female hiring goals and timetables to which the contractor must commit its ‘goodfaith’ efforts,” a requirement that Laurence Silberman, as under secretary of labor, claimed would ensure opportunities for women and minorities. In the business world, companies faced heated pressure from the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) and the OFCCP to conform to multicultural and nondiscriminatory practices. Many companies found themselves on the losing end of discrimination lawsuits filed by the EEOC, and many settlements required not only monetary compensation to women and minorities for violating their rights but also company programs and policies that would help to fuel women and minority success in the workplace. Consequently, a number of large corporations voluntarily implemented affirmative action programs on their own. Indeed, organizations such as Plans for Progress, a collaboration of more than 165 Fortune 500 companies, freely engaged in affirmative action efforts to recruit women and minorities into their workplaces.
The Reaction Comes Starting in the late 1970s, and further fueled by the Reagan administration during the 1980s that altered many social welfare and EEOC programs, affirmative action became a national controversy. With the waning of the post–World War II economic boom, increased competition, and cheap labor markets overseas, the economic policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations resonated with a public whose members were willing to find a scapegoat for their economic woes. The newly devised plans implemented during this time included not only severe cuts to many welfare and social programs but also racially coded language designed to appeal to White voters and public discourse arguing that because racism was no longer an issue in the United States, programs designed to create opportunities for minorities were no longer needed. The idea that everyone was on a level playing field generated new hope for Whites (males in particular) in the form of reverse discrimination, a notion suggesting that Whites were being racially discriminated against by programs and policies designed to promote the participation of women and minorities in higher education and the workplace. In addition, Executive Orders 10925 and 11246 were amended to reduce their effectiveness, and the EEOC and OFCCP found themselves targets of the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the White House. Around the same time, the 1978 Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, added fuel to the affirmative action debate. Although the Court made it clear that affirmative action was legal (and would repeat this argument in more recent affirmative action cases, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger), it outlawed the use of quota systems, opening the door for future anti-affirmative action advocates. Although affirmative action was rapidly losing ground in the political and social arenas of the United States, most businesses in corporate America continued their affirmative action programs into the 1990s. Since then, however, many companies have moved away from affirmative action policies and programs in favor of initiatives centered on diversity and inclusion. Current attempts to thwart affirmative action have found success in several states, with the most recent being the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (also known as Proposal 2). In what may be the most powerful attack on affirmative action, Proposal 2 bans
Afghan Americans
affirmative action and equal opportunity programs in employment in Michigan (as well as in education and business contracts). Proposal 2 was passed on November 7, 2006, by 58% of the voters and was set to go into effect on December 22, 2007. Michigan represents the third state, after California and Washington, to pass such an initiative against the use of affirmative action in employment. Although affirmative action continues to be a heated issue in the United States, the issue of racial and gender inequality in the workplace continues to be ignored. Women and minorities are still often overlooked in corporate positions that hold any serious decision-making power. They also continue to be underrepresented in higher education, both as students and as faculty members, and despite some highprofile figures, their representation in U.S. politics is still not commensurate with their numbers.
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Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Renzulli, Linda A., Linda Grant, and Sheetija Kathuria. 2006. “Race, Gender, and the Wage Gap: Comparing Faculty Salaries in Predominately White and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Gender & Society 20:491–510. West, Cornel. 1996. “Affirmative Action in Context.” Pp. 31–35 in The Affirmative Action Debate, edited by George E. Curry. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Williams, Linda Faye. 1996. “The Politics of Affirmative Action.” Pp. 241–257 in The Affirmative Action Debate, edited by George E. Curry. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
AFGHAN AMERICANS
David G. Embrick See also Affirmative Action in Education; African American Women and Work; Discrimination; Emancipation Proclamation; Glass Ceiling; Informal Economy; Labor Market Segmentation; Scapegoats
Further Readings
Acker, Joan. 2006. “Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations.” Gender & Society 20:441–464. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without Racists: ColorBlind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Burk, Martha. 2005. Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done about It. New York: Scribner. Burstein, Paul. 1985. Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States since the New Deal. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Feagin, Joe R. 2006. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Feagin, Joe R., Hernan Vera, and Nikitah Imani. 1996. The Agony of Education: Black Students at White Colleges and Universities. New York: Routledge. Green, James R. 1978. Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895–1943. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Green, James R. 1998. The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Afghan Americans are immigrants from Afghanistan, a country of 31.9 million people by 2007 estimates, as well as their descendants. Afghan Americans represent the many diverse groups of Afghanistan, including the different linguistic, political, religious, and ethnic groups. There are nineteen different ethnic groups in Afghanistan, but the majority in the United States are Pushtun and Tajik. According to the 2000 census, a total of 45,195 people born in Afghanistan
Russia
Kazakhstan
Uzbekistan Azerbaijan
Turkmenistan
Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan
China
Afghanistan
Iran Iraq
Pakistan Kuwait
Nepal
Persian Gulf
Bhutan
Qatar Bangladesh
U. A. E.
Saudi Arabia
Oman
Arabian Sea
India Bay of Bengal
Yemen
Somalia
Indian Ocean Sri Lanka
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were residing in the United States, and 57.5% of them were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Afghanistan to the United States and the contemporary picture of Afghan Americans.
Immigration Patterns Immigration patterns of Afghans before 1953 are difficult to estimate because relevant statistics are virtually nonexistent. However, the first Afghans to reach U.S. shores probably arrived during the 1920s or 1930s. Data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service indicate that Afghans who entered the United States between 1953 and 1979 were highly educated and wealthy. Many Afghans entered the country as students and stayed. Others were trained under various developmental programs and were employed mainly in government administration and education. However, after the 1979 Soviet invasion, many Afghans were stranded in the United States as students or sought asylum as diplomats. For the following 10 years, Afghans who entered the United States were either refugees or reunifying with family members who were already living in the United States.
Contemporary Community Immigration from Afghanistan has been uneven. Of those Afghan-born people in the United States in 2000, only 2% had entered the country prior to 2000. During the early 1990s, most Afghan arrivals were admitted as family-sponsored immigrants. Approximately 1,500 Afghan refugees were admitted to the United States each year until 1994, when admissions virtually ceased. The next wave of immigrants, mainly women and children, came between 1996 and 1999 due to a lack of social services after the Tajik government collapsed. During recent years, people from Afghanistan have sought permanent residency and refugee status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 to 2002, approximately 1,000 Afghans immigrated to the United States annually. Then, reflecting the U.S. involvement in that country, as many as 4,000 Afghans were granted legal permanent status annually. Similarly, the number of refugees arriving has increased but with a somewhat different pattern. Between 1,400 and 3,000 arrived from 2000 to 2003, but the number dropped to less than 1,000 for the period from 2004 to 2006. At least 1,000 Afghan
Americans have become naturalized citizens annually since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005, there were 71,552 people of Afghan national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Virginia, New York, Maryland, and Texas. The San Francisco Bay area, with eight mosques and many cultural organizations and businesses, is the largest Afghan community. Other large Afghan communities can be found in northern Virginia and the Los Angeles area. According to the 2000 census, 47.7% speak English less than “very well.” The median family income was $36,967, as compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Famous Afghan Americans include Khaled Hosseini, award-winning author of A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner; Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the highest ranking Muslim in the Bush administration; Ehsan Aman, artist and musical composer; and Miriam Wafa, singer. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Linton, Cynthia, ed. 1996. The Ethnic Handbook. Schiller Park, IL: Business Press. Robson, Barbara and Juliene Lipson. 2002. The Afghans: Their History and Culture. Washington, DC: Cultural Orientation Resource Center. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.cal.org/co/publications/ cultures/afghans.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
AFRICAN AMERICANS African Americans are a people whose ancestors are from Africa. Although there are obvious mixtures among African Americans, the dominant ancestry of
African Americans
the people is from Africa. African Americans first used this term to define themselves, but for various reasons they have also used terms such as Negro, Colored, Afro-American, and Black at various times in their history. The most frequently used terms now are African American and Black, which are used interchangeably. The term African by itself is, to a lesser extent, used interchangeably with African American and Black by more culturally conscious African Americans. Approximately 35 million African Americans reside in the United States, constituting 12.3% of the total population, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Most of them (88%) live in metropolitan areas. Approximately half of all African Americans live in the South. This entry reviews their history, from slavery through emancipation and ongoing struggles for equity and civil rights.
African Background The majority of the ancestors of African Americans came from areas of West Africa that were home to various social and political formations, from small ethnic groups and city-states to large states and empires. Among these were the states of Ashanti, Benin, Dahomey, and Oyo and the major empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. These latter empires existed from approximately 300 BC to the early 1600s and were defined by their efficient government, great wealth, commitment to education and scholarship, international trade, and strong armies. Songhai, the last of these empires, was conquered in 1596 by forces from North Africa and was in decline when Europe initiated its international traffic in humans variously called the African slave trade or—by an increasing number of African American and Continental African scholars—the Holocaust of African enslavement.
Enslavement Although the Founding Fathers of the United States spoke and wrote extensively about freedom and human rights, they held Africans as slaves in all thirteen of the British colonies. Moreover, although Africans fought in the War of Independence (1775–1783), it did not change White Americans’ attitudes toward enslavement. Enslavement did, however, begin to decline in the North due to changing economic conditions. It began to grow rapidly in the
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South with the increase of cotton cultivation and the desire for enslaved labor after the invention of the cotton gin. Sugar plantations in the South also contributed to the demand for enslaved labor. It is in this context that the massive violent process called the European slave trade takes root. Some authors have argued that, due to the massive violence, destruction of human life and culture, and interruption of African history, trade is too limited a term and hides the catastrophic impact of the process. They argue that when one considers the massive destruction of human life—in the millions—and the destruction of villages, towns, cities, states, and whole civilizations, as well as great works of art, literature, and the people who made them, trade is not a category capable of defining such a catastrophic event. Thus, some scholars prefer the term Holocaust of African enslavement. By this term is meant “a morally monstrous act of genocide that is not only against the targeted peoples but also a crime against humanity.” In fact, such a definition undergirds the basic modern claim of reparations for African Americans and other Africans— both continental and diasporan. How th he Syste em Work ked
The U.S. system of enslavement was defined first by its physical, psychological, and sexual brutality. Physically, it was a violent domination by various forms of punishment and terror, including whipping, mutilation, torture, murder, and deprivation. Psychologically, it involved daily humiliation, coerced protocols of submission, religious and social doctrines of White superiority and Black inferiority, and processes to deculturalize and dehumanize the enslaved Africans. Sexual brutality was imposed mostly on women but also on children and men; it involved both forced breeding and rape. These practices and the system itself were further enforced by law, armed bodies of various official and unofficial kinds, and other institutions. Resissta ance to o Ensllavement
Africans’ resistance to enslavement began in Africa and continued throughout the period of enslavement in the United States in various forms. Cultural resistance involved maintaining cultural views, values, and practice in changed forms and creating new cultural forms that reaffirmed African dignity and humanity and sustained them. Day-to-day resistance
22
African Americans
was another form of resistance and included strikes, arson, attacks of various kinds on the enslavers, suicide, infanticide, and flight. Abolitionism—various efforts to end enslavement—was another form of resistance and involved petitions to the government, fund-raising, legal defense, educational efforts through writings and lectures, security provisions for formerly enslaved Africans who escaped or were rescued, and the building of an Underground Railroad to free and support resettlement of enslaved Africans. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins Harper, and Robert Purvis were prominent abolitionist leaders. Another form of resistance was emigrationism, which involved efforts to return to Africa, Haiti, South America, or elsewhere where Africans could have freedom, self-determination, and justice. Paul Cuffee, Martin Delany, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, James Holly, and Alexander Crummell were very active in this movement. Moreover, the Negro Convention Movement, which was both abolitionist and emigrationist, played an important role in ending enslavement and exploring the possibilities of a free and good life elsewhere. Finally, Africans also resisted enslavement through armed struggles. This included ship mutinies, guerilla warfare conducted by marooned and independent communities, alliances and common struggles with Native American and Mexican allies from societies to which they escaped, and armed revolts. The most important of the revolts were those led by Gabriel and Nana Prosser in 1800, by Denmark Vesey in 1822, and by Nat Turner in 1831. More than 250 of these revolts are recorded in U.S. history, and they clearly had a significant impact on the enslaved Africans as well as on their enslavers. Laws were passed, punishments were handed out, and the system was tightened. But the revolts continued, revealing an unquenchable thirst for freedom and a profound political commitment to struggle for it against overwhelming odds by the enslaved Africans. Free ed Africcan ns in n th he North h
Although enslavement gradually disappeared in the North, Africans were not totally free or equal there. Indeed, they were not allowed to worship freely with Whites, did not receive equal justice before the law, and were segregated in housing, education, and other areas of social life. Thus, they began a long struggle to improve their lives and win freedom for
their enslaved sisters and brothers in the South. During the early postcolonial period, African Americans began to build major institutions, self-help and benevolent societies, Masonic lodges, and other voluntary associations as well as intellectual and literary societies, medical facilities, and businesses. In addition, several African American newspapers were established, the first of which was the Freedom’s Journal, founded in 1827 by John Russworm and Samuel Cornish. The great abolitionist and leader Frederick Douglass also established the North Star in which he, like others, argued forcefully and meticulously against enslavement. There was also development of a rich body of literature, including novels, plays, short stories, and social commentaries, criticizing enslavement and calling for struggle and the freedom and upliftment of African people. David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) and Maria Stewart’s Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (1832) are examples of this literature. Autobiographies by formerly enslaved persons also emerged. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1854) and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) are representative of this genre.
The Civil War Era Although numerous factors can be cited as causes of the Civil War, the question of enslavement, and thus the future and place of Africans in the United States, was at the core of its causes. African Americans volunteered quickly, but Whites resisted their service, fearing changes in the relationship during and after the war and possible rebellion and armed struggle for their rights. But by the summer of 1862, after a series of military defeats of Union forces, Congress passed the Confiscation and Militia Act to open service up to free and freed Africans in the war effort. In addition, to lend moral weight to the cause and to further inspire and involve Africans in the war effort, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. It was not a blanket declaration of freedom but rather limited itself to those states in rebellion. Also, it was clearly unenforceable in the South, which was in rebellion, but it gave the war a moral character it previously lacked and contributed to an increase in volunteers among free Africans and those who escaped from enslavement.
African Americans
Africans, who were eager to fight for freedom, respect, and equality in society, enlisted in large numbers and served in various capacities—as regular soldiers and sailors, guides, scouts, intelligence agents, engineers, nurses, surgeons, chaplains, construction workers, teamsters, cooks, carpenters, miners, farmers, commandos, and recruiters. An estimated 186,000 Africans participated as soldiers and 29,000 participated as sailors, accounting for 25% of U.S. sailors. The real number of participants is probably much higher but was distorted by many racially mixed people being registered or “passing” as Whites. Blacks served in every theater of operations and won seventeen Congressional Medals of Honor on land and four on sea in spite of vicious racism exhibited in treatment, pay and time differentials, poor equipment, bad medical care, excess fatigue details, and reckless and hasty assignments. The Civil War ended April 9, 1865. Although it won Blacks new respect, it also meant the beginning of a new struggle to secure economic and political rights that did not come automatically with emancipation. Thus, the nation and the national African American community entered into a period called Reconstruction. Recconstru uctiion
The period of Reconstruction (1865–1877) was a time of great leaps forward and hope as well as of great possibilities to realize the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality for all. But after a strong start, the country failed in solving the problems that the postwar period posed—the problems of Reconstruction. These problems essentially revolved around integrating the freed Africans into the social fabric, especially in the South; protecting them from reenslavement, exploitation, and abuse; and providing them with the economic and political bases to live lives of dignity and decency. Congress passed three amendments directed toward integration of Blacks into the social fabric on the basis of equality. Essentially, the Thirteenth Amendment (in 1865) freed Africans, the Fourteenth Amendment (in 1868) made them citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment (in 1870) gave them the right to vote. Congress also passed several civil rights acts to strengthen and enforce the civil rights of Africans and their rightful participation in the body politic. However, Congress did not give Blacks the economic foundation they needed, and so Blacks were
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essentially reintegrated back into the southern economy under semienslaved conditions as sharecroppers. Threatened with imprisonment and terror by the new legal Black codes passed by the South and with no protection or land, the majority of freed Africans slowly but inevitably returned to the plantations more or less at the mercy of their employers. The Reconstruction period did, however, provide some short-lived political gains for African Americans. During this period, twenty-two African Americans served in Congress. Two served in the Senate (Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, both from Mississippi), and twenty served in the House of Representatives. Under the Hayes–Tilden Compromise, the federal troops that protected African American rights were withdrawn, and the future of African Americans was literally turned over to their former enslavers. Thus, Reconstruction came to a tragic end with the rise of White terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), violent resubordination of African Americans, and the establishment of legal segregation.
Migrations North The worsening situation in the South led to migration from the rural areas to the cities of the Midwest and West and finally of the North. The greatest waves of migrants were to the North so as to escape the political oppression and economic disaster and suffering in the South. The North promised opportunities for jobs in steel mills, railroads, the automobile industry, and meat-packing plants, especially during World War I. Black newspapers, labor scouts, and relatives who had gone ahead encouraged southern African Americans to come north. However, once in the North, Africans were shut off into ghettos and the racial violence, discrimination, segregation, and inequality persisted. Lynching and race riots were major problems in both the South and North. Also, after World War I, their new jobs were eliminated and the living standards declined. The Great Depression of 1929 aggravated the situation, but through a system of sharing, bartering, self-help, mutual aid, and (eventually) forms of federal and state relief and public works projects, African Americans demonstrated impressive resiliency and durability. During the 1920s, in the midst of some of the most difficult times for African American people, African American intellectuals initiated a period of extraordinary aesthetic creativity called the Harlem Renaissance.
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African Americans
Producing some of the country’s and the African American community’s best literature, writers, poets, and painters developed a new discourse on the meaning of being both African and American and of having African and southern roots and living a northern ghetto life. They also addressed the expansive meaning of being in oppression and in struggle in various creative ways. Alain Locke spoke and wrote about “the New Negro” as a creative and social conception. Some of the other major names during the Renaissance were Jean Toomer, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, Zora Neal Houston, and Claude McKay.
Renewed Resistance The racist violence, discrimination, and disappointment in the North and the continuing oppression in the South gave rise to the formation of organizations and movements to challenge and resist the state of things. The system of segregation established by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) enshrined in law a doctrine of “separate but equal” that ensured racial inequality and discrimination. Also called Jim Crow, the system limited and denied Africans access to public facilities and established a racial protocol of subordination and subservience for them. One of the first movements to resist segregation and engage in organized efforts of self-help was the Black Women’s Club Movement, which had emerged among African American women during the 1890s. It rose out of African cultural traditions that stressed collective concern and responsibility to family and community, and this led to free Black women and men establishing numerous mutual aid societies during the period of enslavement and afterward. In 1896, the First National Conference of the Colored Women of America convened and established the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) with Mary Church Terrell as its first president. The concerns of the NACW included issues and activities around education, lynching, White sexual abuse and character assassination of Black women, health care, child care and care for orphans and the elderly, job training, and the struggle for social justice. Within 20 years of its founding, the NACW represented more than 1,000 clubs and 100,000 Black women. Some of the major figures in this movement were Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett,
Anna Julia Cooper, Charlotte Brown, Fannie Barrier Williams, Margaret Murray Washington, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Working within the NACW as its president from 1924 to 1929, Bethune had a vision of a larger and more powerful organization, the National Council of Negro Women, which she organized and founded in 1935. In addition to the Black Women’s Club Movement, the Niagara Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Urban League were very active. The Niagara Movement was formed in 1905 by Du Bois and others to fight against injustice. It demanded the right to justice, the vote, and education; the abolition of Jim Crow; equal treatment in the armed forces; and enforcement of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. It gave way to the NAACP, which was formed in 1909 by African Americans and White liberals. The NAACP, which absorbed many of the Niagara Movement’s members (including Du Bois), adopted much of the movement’s philosophy. In fact, Du Bois was the only African American among its original executive officers. However, the NAACP went on to launch and win effective legal campaigns against lynching and Jim Crowism and to secure the vote. Also, the Urban League was founded in 1911 and dedicated itself to social service programs for jobs, housing, recreation facilities, health clinics, and the like, shunning politics and the social struggles of African Americans. African Americans created institutions to sustain and enhance community life and maintain a decent measure of independence and selfreliance. They established educational, cultural, political, economic, and financial institutions to serve the needs of the community and to participate more effectively in the larger society. Finally, in the midst of this period, in addition to major women leaders such as Bethune and WellsBarnett (a writer and social activist), three male leaders were key in helping to shape the vision and activities of the African American community. The first was Booker T. Washington, who is known for building Tuskegee University and whose stress was on agricultural and industrial education, accommodationism, avoidance of political participation, and quiet lobbying and support for causes in the background. Du Bois was one of the greatest intellectuals in U.S. history and a scholar-activist deeply engaged in the African American struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. As mentioned, he was a founder of both
African Americans
the Niagara Movement and the NAACP and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis. He was also a panAfricanist and a major organizer of the modern PanAfrican Movement. In addition, he was Washington’s most insistent critic, arguing for political participation, the struggle for civil rights, and advanced education as well sas for agricultural and industrial education. Marcus Garvey was the founder and leader of the largest mass movement of African people in history, involving millions in the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and elsewhere. His organization was the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Born in Jamaica, he came to the United States in 1916 hoping to see Washington, whose stress on economic foundation and self-reliance was embraced by Garvey. But he believed that Washington should have also stressed building a political base. Both Garvey and Du Bois were pan-Africanists, but Garvey was interested not only in freeing the continent of Africa but also in building a power base there to develop the continent and serve as a source of protection and development for Africans everywhere.
The New Deal The New Deal, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, held out hope and relief for Blacks through its focus on social welfare and public work programs. Blacks, recognizing the importance of this new focus, shifted dramatically from their traditional Republican voting to support Roosevelt and the Democratic party by 1936. Also, the New Deal marked a significant turning point in Black–White relations for the better. This was due to the continuous struggle of Blacks for equality and the end of discrimination as well as to the humanitarian focus of the administration. Moreover, Blacks achieved increased respectability in the Roosevelt administration as specialists and advisers in various governmental departments. This marked a change in the Washington model of an unofficial adviser whose relationship with the president, more than his or her skill, fitted him or her for the job. These were highly respected specialists and advisers who were civil servants. They were called the “Black Cabinet” and the “Black Brain Trust” due to their academic and professional achievements. Among the most notable of this brain trust were Robert Weaver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eugene Jones, Ralph Bunche, and Abram Harris. Although these positions
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were not Cabinet level, they were a breakthrough in appointment by merit and paved the way for advances during the 1960s and afterward.
The Freedom Movement The Black Freedom Movement (approximately 1955 to 1975) flowered during the 1960s. This period may also be called the Reaffirmation of the 1960s because it was a time when African Americans reaffirmed both their Africanness and social justice tradition in an intense struggle for freedom, justice, equality, cultural integrity, power over their lives, and a just and good society that offered a context for these goods. The movement left an important legacy of struggle and achievement through expanding the realm of freedom in this country, and it served as an inspiration and model of struggle for human freedom for other oppressed and marginalized peoples and groups in the United States and around the world. The Civil Rights Movement, although clearly a continuation of African Americans’ ongoing freedom struggle, emerged in the South against segregation as well as in the interest of freedom, justice, dignity, and equal access and opportunity. Its pivotal moment was the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and the emergence of leaders such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., who became national symbols of the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the boycott, the demonstrations, and cooperative effort became models for other struggles. Clearly, the NAACP’s winning the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in schools, was an important development in civil rights history and helped to give momentum to the movement. It put an end to Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine, reaffirmed the rightness of the struggle, and served as support and encouragement to attack segregation in all areas. The civil rights struggle was led by major groups, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Urban League, although countless smaller groups played fundamental, and indeed indispensable, roles in the civil rights struggle. Likewise, major personalities, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ruby Doris Robinson, Dorothy Height, Kwame
26
African Americans
Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (Rap Brown), were key to the civil rights struggle, but there were countless less known freedom fighters who also played an indispensable role in the movement. The Civil Rights Movement employed numerous nonviolent forms of active resistance to segregation and oppression. In addition to boycotts and demonstrations, there were marches, sit-ins, freedom rides to challenge segregationist laws and practices, legal and legislative battles, and economic initiatives of resistance and construction. The Civil Rights Movement had impressive gains in its legal and legislative struggles. These include the 1954 Brown decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Bill of 1960, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling in September 1961 against racial segregation on interstate carriers and terminals, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which was the most far-reaching and comprehensive civil rights law passed by Congress), mass voter registration, the Voting Act of 1965, and widespread desegregation of public facilities.
The Black Power Movement The Black Power Movement from 1965 to 1975 began in the midst of the urban rebellions and the decline of the Civil Rights Movement. Its beginning was marked by the Watts Revolt in 1965, and it continued until 1975. Although the call for Black Power was not made until 1966, its history had already begun during the early 1960s with the resurgence of the Black nationalist sentiment among African Americans. The movement was influenced by Marcus Garvey, the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, especially its national representative Malcolm X (in 1965), and smaller nationalist organizations in the urban areas of the United States. But it is from the SNCC that the call for Black Power emerged and was embraced nationally as a fundamental focus. Willie Ricks (Mukasa) first made the direct call on an SNCC march, but it was Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who raised it to a national battle cry. And it was Ture and Charles Hamilton who wrote the essential book on Black Power titled Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. In their book, Ture and Hamilton stressed the need for Black power to overcome racist oppression, making a clear distinction between individual acts of discrimination and racism as an institutional arrangement.
In 1966, Adam Clayton Powell called a group of leaders to plan a series of National Black Power Conferences to develop and carry out an agenda to achieve Black Power in the United States. The meeting established a Continuations Committee to organize the conferences. Nathan Wright of Newark, New Jersey, was elected chair, and Maulana Karenga of Los Angeles was elected vice chair. The second conference was held in Newark in 1967, and the third was held in Philadelphia in 1968. Komozi Woodard reported that although Wright was the leader of the National Black Power Conference Continuations Committee, by 1968 Karenga was its chief organizer and theoretician. Karenga asserted that the struggle for Black Power had three fundamental goals: selfdetermination, self-respect, and self-defense. To elaborate, he meant that Black people (a) should control their communities, destiny, and daily lives through institutional strength; (b) should be culturally grounded with a sense of expanded self-worth and ability rooted in culture and struggle; and (c) should be able to exercise their right to defend themselves against attacks of racism, especially by the police, “by any means necessary,” as Malcolm said. During the Black Power conferences, Karenga also introduced the concept of operational unity, which he defined as “unity in diversity and unity without uniformity”; this became a standard reference and call to unity in the Black Liberation Movement. As the Black Power Movement developed its conference process, it also engaged in electoral politics and embraced and nurtured the Black Arts Movement, the Black Studies Movement, and the Black Student Movement. It helped to inspire and build Black United Fronts, the Modern Black Convention Movement, the National Black Assembly, the Congress of African Peoples, and the African Liberation Support Committee. The Black Power Movement also launched a massive political and cultural education process linking the African American struggle with Continental African and Third World liberation struggles and introduced the concept and practice of armed struggle in the urban centers. As an expression of nationalism, the Black Power Movement can be divided into three basic tendencies or thrusts—religious, cultural, and political—represented by major groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Shrine of the Black Madonna; Us and the East; and the Republic of New Africa and the Black Panther Party, respectively. However, the Nation of Islam and Us had elements of each of these.
27 UT
AZ
ID
NM
CO
WY
MT
Estimated Percentages of Blacks in the United States in 2005
HI
NV
CA
OR
WA
TX
OK
KS
NE
SD
ND MN
MO
LA
AR
IA
MS
IL
WI
MI
AL
OH
KY TN
IN
MI
GA
SC
VA
FL
NC
WV
PA MD
NY
NH
DE
NJ
CT
VT
RI
MA
ME
0% – 5% 5.1% – 24.9% 25% +
Percent Blacks
Source: Developed by Egan Urban Center, DePaul University, Chicago, from U.S. Census data, County Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, July 1, 2005; used by permission.
Figure 1
AK
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African Americans
The 1970s The decline of the Black Freedom Movement ushered in an era of retrenchment and resurging racism and a countermove in the African American community to resist this and continue to push forward. The Black Freedom Movement had declined partly of its own initiative but also due to the massive suppression by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) launched against the movement to “discredit, disrupt, destroy, and otherwise neutralize” all real and potentially threatening leadership and organizations. This included groups such as the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, Us, the CORE, the SNCC, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and leaders as moderate as Martin Luther King, Jr. From this, violent internecine struggles were provoked; activists were shot and murdered, put in prison on trumped-up charges, or driven into exile; and families as well as organizations were disrupted and destroyed. The violence and shock of the suppression destroyed morale, provoked both critical and uncritical reassessment, and made many wonder whether organized activism was any longer a valid strategy for social change. Much of what passed as a critical assessment of the 1960s was in fact Black selfcondemnation and reflected both a loss of heart and vision of what the 1960s decade was all about and certainly what was achieved. The 1960s represented one of the most important decades in Black history, and its achievements were substantial. Even though Blacks lost ground during the 1970s, they also made gains. Easily the greatest gains of African Americans during the 1970s were their penetration and victories in electoral politics. Taking advantage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Blacks went to the polls in great numbers, especially in the South. Whereas in 1966 there were only six Blacks in Congress, ninety-seven Blacks in state legislatures, and no Black mayors, by 1976 eighteen Blacks had been elected to Congress and several hundred had been elected to state legislatures. Lieutenant governors in California and Colorado were Black, as were mayors of several major cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, Newark, and Cleveland. Moreover, thousands of Blacks had been elected to other state and local offices. Also, Blacks sought to build national independent power structures throughout the decade, beginning in 1972 with the first National Black Political
Convention in Gary, Indiana, the formation of the Black political agenda, and the National Black Assembly for collective planning and strategy directed toward social policy and social change. The 1970s also brought a resurgence of pan-Africanism and the formation of two key organizations to advance its principles and practice: the African Liberation Support Committee, dedicated to supporting liberation struggles on the continent of Africa, and TransAfrica, an African American lobby for Africa and the Caribbean. Affirmative action was another major issue and struggle during the 1970s. Growing out of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was extended and reinforced by executive orders and the Equal Employment Opportunities Act of 1972. Although a number of court cases challenged affirmative action, terming it “reverse discrimination,” no case was as well known as the Bakke case, which originated in California as opposition to the special admissions policy of the medical school at the University of California, Davis. The Bakke case brought to a head the struggle over the questions of numerical goals versus quotas, preferential treatment versus corrective measures for historical injustices, and racially weighted criteria versus raceconscious criteria for school admissions as well as employment. The Supreme Court seemed to straddle and ruled in 1978 that reservation of places for people of color and uncompetitive evaluation was prohibited but that consideration of race and ethnic origin as one criterion for selection as well as consciously seeking diversity was permissible.
The 1980s and 1990s The 1980s began with the challenges to African Americans of continuing struggle to rebuild a Black mass movement and appropriate alliances and coalitions so as to defend Black gains, win new ones, and minimize losses. In this context, there were increased efforts to build united fronts to maximize strength and cooperation. In this way, the Black Leadership Forum, made up of approximately sixteen national organizations and the Congressional Black Caucus, was created. This was a means to gather; to get briefings on the latest governmental policies, decisions, and proposals; and to discuss possible defensive and development strategies. The 1980s also witnessed a heightened level of electoral/political activity among African Americans. In Chicago, Harold Washington waged a brilliant
African Americans
campaign to become mayor. He put together a coalition of Blacks, Latinos, workers, professionals, nationalists, White liberals, and leftists to achieve his victory. Jesse Jackson ran for U.S. president in 1984 and 1988, mobilizing and registering millions of voters, and this was instrumental in getting other Blacks and progressives elected. Although Jackson himself did not win office, his campaigns were seen as an important tool in mobilizing, organizing, and politically educating Blacks and progressives and in building the Rainbow Coalition for the inauguration of a new progressive politics. The 1990s featured carryover problems from the 1980s that required sober assessment. Among these problems were (a) an increasing negative attitude of the Supreme Court toward racial justice and affirmative action, (b) a continuation of hate crimes against African Americans (which tripled in the seven years from 1983 to 1990), (c) a veto and later passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and (d) an increase in poverty among Blacks and in the country as a whole. The 1990s also began with a revolt in Los Angeles in April 1992 that grew out of smoldering resentment of oppression in the Black and Latino communities. But it was triggered by the acquittal of four White Los Angeles policemen who brutally beat a Black man, Rodney King, while he was on the ground and incapacitated. The rebellion was the most destructive in recent U.S. history, leading to the loss of 58 lives and millions of dollars in property. King became a symbol of police brutality, and the rebellion became a reminder of the injustice faced by Black people. It also had a Latino dimension and reflected similar injustices that are suffered by them and that they too will dare to struggle to correct. Clearly, one of the most impressive and memorable events during the 1990s was the Million Man March/Day of Absence (MMM/DOA). The MMM/DOA was clearly an event of major importance not only because of the vast numbers of its participants but also because of its social policy and social practice emphasis and the effect it had on Black men, Black people in general, and the country. Called for by Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, the MMM/DOA was a joint project of hundreds of organizations and was one of the most massive organizing efforts for a demonstration in the history of the country. It brought together Africans from all over the country and world and from all spiritual traditions through the efforts of local organizing committees in more than 300 cities. Held in Washington, D.C., on
29
October 16, 1995, it assembled more than 1 million persons and was the largest demonstration in the city’s history. The MMM/DOA was directed first and foremost as a call to Black men, although women also participated and attended. A second aspect of the project was the Day of Absence in which women would take the lead in organizing the communities to stay away from businesses, school, and work in support and observance, to register people to vote, and to hold teach-ins around social policy initiatives to improve and empower the community. The mission statement represented the collective position of the leadership of the march, a broad-based group representing various political, religious, and economic affiliations and interests. Maulana Karenga was selected to draft the collective mission statement, pulling together the common grounds for a joint set of policies and initiatives directed toward the community, government, and corporations. The statement began by registering consciousness “of the critical juncture in which we live and the challenges it poses for us” and “concern about increasing racism and continuing commitment to White supremacy in this country, the deteriorating social conditions, degradation of the environment, and the impact of these on our community, the larger society, and the world.” Moreover, the mission statement noted that African men and women came to the capital “reaffirming the best values of our social justice tradition which require respect for the dignity and rights of the human person, economic justice, meaningful political participation, shared power, cultural integrity, mutual respect for all peoples, and uncompromising resistance to social forces and structures which deny or limit these.” In this spirit, they also came to “declare our commitment to assume a new and expanded responsibility in the struggle to build and sustain a free and empowered community, a just society, and a better world.” The MMM/DOA was followed by the Million Woman March (MWM) on October 25, 1997, and the Million Youth Marches (MYMs) in 1998, building on and expanding themes from the MMM/DOA. These included unity, family and community building and strengthening, pan-Africanism, education, reparations, human rights, and struggle. The MWM included more than 2 million persons from around the world and specifically stressed issues of sisterhood, child and elder care, human rights, and honoring African women’s tradition of social activism.
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African Americans, Migration of
In conclusion, the history of African Americans in the United States from the beginning has been a struggle for freedom, justice, equality, and power over their destiny and daily lives. It has been a history of rising from catastrophic oppression to achieve impressive gains against overwhelming odds and of struggling relentlessly to expand the realm of human freedom and human flourishing in the United States and the world. Maulana Karenga See Appendix A See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African American Studies; African American Women and Work; Back to Africa Movement; Black Bourgeoisie; Black Cinema; Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Black Power; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Ghetto; Jim Crow; Ku Klux Klan; Lynching; Military and Race; Nation of Islam; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Racial Profiling; School Desegregation; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Underclass; Urban League; Voting Rights; Washington, Harold; White Supremacy Movement
Further Readings
Bennett, Lerone. 2003. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. Chicago, IL: Johnson. Franklin, John Hope and Alfred Moss, Jr. 2000. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Harding, Vincent. 1993. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. New York: Harvest/HBJ. Karenga, Maulana. 2002. “Black History: Africans in America.” Pp. 129–230 in Introduction to Black Studies, edited by Maulana Karenga. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press.
AFRICAN AMERICANS, MIGRATION
OF
Migration has been a key process in the African American experience in the United States. African Americans were living primarily in the rural South at the end of slavery, but by the end of the 20th century they were concentrated in urban areas and were more regionally dispersed. Moreover, whereas African Americans generally have been migrating out of the South since the end of slavery, toward the end of the
20th century they began to return to the South. African American migration has had a significant influence on African Americans’ labor market experiences, residential environments, and culture, all of which are reviewed in this entry.
Early Movement African Americans as an ethnic group are a product of migration. During the 16th through early 19th centuries, Africans from a variety of ethnic groups in West and Central Africa experienced forced migration to the Americas as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Approximately 500,000 of the slaves went to the United States. Many of the slaves brought to the United States went to the South to work on plantations that cultivated southern cash crops such as tobacco. During slavery, African Americans continued to migrate. Slaveowners forcibly moved slaves as they sold them within and across states. In addition, some slaves escaped their masters and fled to northern states or to Canada. Free Blacks also moved farther north to escape racial constraints. Between emancipation and World War I, African Americans began moving from rural to urban areas and a small number moved to the North and to the West. An important movement of African Americans occurred in 1879 when several thousand African Americans from states such as Mississippi and Louisiana migrated to Kansas. Henry Adams, a former Union soldier, and Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a carpenter, led the movement. The poor social and economic conditions of African Americans in the South after emancipation motivated these migrants, known as the “Exodusters.” The Exodusters hoped to establish an independent African American community in Kansas. Although some of the Kansas migrants improved their lives, others did not and they eventually left the state.
The Great Migration Around 1910, the Great Migration began as African Americans moved out of the South and to more urban environments. Between 1910 and 1980, more than 4 million African Americans born in the South moved to other regions. Whereas 89% of African Americans lived in the South at the beginning of the 20th century, the proportion of African Americans living in the South decreased to 55% by the end of the century.
African Americans, Migration of
Moreover, between 1920 and 1970, the proportion of African Americans living in urban areas increased from 44% to 74%. Cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles were major destinations. Several factors affected the Great Migration. World War I was a major impetus. The war led to a sharp decline in the number of European immigrants working in northern factories. African Americans from the South fulfilled the northern demand for labor. During World War II, African Americans were permitted to take defense jobs, leading to further migration to the North and to the West. Also, agricultural labor in the South increasingly became mechanized over these decades, and so fewer workers were needed. The decreased number of jobs led to fewer opportunities for African American workers in the South. These labor market changes, coupled with the racism pervasive in the South, led to significant African American migration out of the South between 1910 and 1970. African American social networks and institutions greatly facilitated migration. Many migrants moved in with other family members or friends when they migrated to ease their transition to their new environment. Furthermore, migrants maintained connection to their families in the South by sending their children there during the summers, sending home money, and/or visiting frequently. African American newspapers such as the Chicago Defender disseminated information about the jobs and conditions for African Americans in the North, while African American churches provided material resources for migrants and an institutional venue through which African Americans could press for social and political change. Migration was selective such that African American males were more likely to migrate than were African American females. In addition, the migrants from the South generally had more education than those who remained in the South, but they had less education than those who were born in the North. Southern-born African Americans in the North had higher employment rates and incomes than did northern-born African Americans. African American migration substantially influenced the demographics of urban cities and the experiences of African Americans in the North. African Americans faced opposition in the labor market, where they competed with Whites for jobs. As African Americans moved into northern city centers, Whites began to flee to the suburbs. Racial residential segregation increased. Whites also responded to the
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increasing number of Black migrants with racial violence. As manufacturing jobs left city centers and moved to areas where Whites lived, many African Americans lost jobs and African American neighborhoods became less stable. Areas of isolated poor African Americans emerged. The Great Migration also influenced African American cultural production. Harlem was a major destination for African American migrants and eventually became a cultural center for the African American community. African American artists and writers such as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright arose during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. Later, artists such as Jacob Lawrence used the Great Migration as a subject in their work. In New York and Chicago, migrants carried jazz music with them and the genre evolved. Also, important African American cultural venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater developed in areas with high concentrations of African American migrants.
The Trend Reverses Around the 1970s, the Great Migration began to reverse as the South experienced a net in-migration of African Americans from other regions. Some of the migrants to the South were returning to the region in which they were born, whereas others were moving there for the first time. Although scholars are just beginning to examine the reverse migration, several explanations arise. In the North, the decline in manufacturing jobs available to African Americans, increased labor market competition with low-skilled immigrants, worsening neighborhood quality in northern cities, and the reality that there is also racism in the North are motivations for African Americans to migrate out of the region. The improvement in race relations since the Civil Rights Movement, the economic boom in major southern cities, and the cultural, familial, and social network ties that African Americans have in the South are important factors to pull migrants to the South. Cities such as Atlanta, Orlando, and Charlotte have been major destinations for African American migrants. At the beginning of the 21st century, new demographic and labor market shifts are occurring in the United States, for example, bringing increasing numbers of African, Caribbean, and Latino immigrants to the United States. The story remains to be told about how these shifts will influence African American
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African American Studies
migration and about how recent African American migration patterns will affect African Americans and the United States as a whole. Sabrina Pendergrass See also African Americans; Harlem; Harlem Renaissance; Return Migration; Sundown Towns; White Flight
Further Readings
Dodson, Howard, Sylviane A. Diouf, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 2004. In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. Johnson, Daniel M. and Rex R. Campbell. 1981. Black Migration in America: A Social Demographic History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tolnay, Stewart. 2003. “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond.” Annual Review of Sociology 29:209–233.
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES African American (or Black) Studies is the systematic and critical analysis of the thought and practices of African-descended peoples in their historical, modern, contemporary, and current contexts. As such, it studies the cultures of African peoples in the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and other parts of the world. It embraces scholars of African American literature, history, politics, religion, philosophy, sociology, social work, and many other fields within the humanities and social sciences. This entry describes the origins of African American (or Black) Studies, its development as a discipline, and its current status.
Origins The roots of the discipline now known as African American Studies lie in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The period provided the historical moment when a call for a change in societal and academic structures needed to be made. Seizing the moment, various organizations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black student unions on predominantly White campuses, made a popular demand for academic relevance and positive social
change. Four phases characterize the history of the movement. The first occurred in 1960 when the Civil Rights Movement demanded the abolition of racial segregation in public places, equality and justice for Blacks, and the organization of Blacks into an independent and powerful social force. The move to achieve these objectives was spearheaded by the SNCC and included organizations such as the Southern Leadership Conference Committee (SLC), the Committee on Racial Equality (CORE), the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers. The second phase emerged in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley, where students—mostly White—had formed the Free Speech Movement to protest against the administration’s policies on campus. Eventually, the movement merged its interests with those of the larger national Civil Rights Movement. Together, proponents called for the empowerment of students and Blacks. A year later, the third phase emerged when student opposition to the Vietnam War, and the involvement of some universities in it, led to the formation of the antiwar movement. Members questioned the universities’ structure and governance pattern and suggested ways in which the institutions could relate to Black students, the Black community, and other Third World peoples. By doing so, the student movement succeeded in forging a link between demands for changes in the universities and for those in the society at large. The final phase occurred in 1966 at the peak of the Black Power Movement. Empowered by the movement’s vision, the Negro Students’ Association at San Francisco State College changed its name to the Black Students’ Union (BSU). Members demanded the establishment of an autonomous Department of Black Studies where the mission would consist of academic excellence and social responsibility. Their demands, buttressed in a five-month strike, inspired student and faculty activism at many other universities across the nation. Several protests and sit-ins were organized by Black students, faculty, and allies who demanded that the traditional academic structures be changed to enable the institution to address the culture, needs, and aspirations of Blacks and other minorities. In February 1968, San Francisco State appointed Nathan Hare to coordinate the first Black Studies program and to develop a proposal for the establishment of a Department of Black Studies. Hare completed his
African American Studies
task and promptly submitted his report in April. Its implementation was delayed by the administration. This provoked a series of student protests, including a strike in November that led to student–police clashes, which in turn brought more community involvement in campus affairs. By the spring of 1969 when the strike ended, the program was given an official status and became a fully fledged department in September 1969. The successful experience of San Francisco State was duplicated on various campuses in the nation. And by the end of 1969, many colleges and universities had established Black Studies programs of some sort. However, the historically Black colleges and universities, which had historically shouldered the responsibility for teaching the Black experience, did not initially embrace the new discipline. But after the adoption of the program by universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, prominent Black universities such as Emory, Fisk, Howard, Lincoln, Morgan, and Tuskegee followed suit. Today, many institutions offer a degree in Black Studies.
Development of a Discipline The discipline strove toward consolidation and expansion during the 1970s and 1980s. In the process, many new projects emerged, further influencing the definition and character of the discipline. These include (a) professional organizations of the discipline, (b) the concept of Afrocentricity, (c) Black Women’s Studies, (d) Multicultural Studies, and (e) Classical African Studies. Organizzatio onal Gro owth h
The first professional organizations created were the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA) and the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS). The AHSA was formed in 1969 by members of the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association (ASA), the major professional organization of African Studies at that time. They were motivated by the persistent refusal of the latter association to provide Africandescended peoples with the opportunity to modify the ideological and structural foundations of the association. The basic goals of the AHSA were to study all dimensions and approaches to the history and culture of African-descended peoples in the United States and elsewhere. The AHSA has served several functions, including providing a context for scholarly exchange.
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And its annual conferences bring together scholars from all over the worldwide African community in fruitful exchange and creative challenge. The next institution to be founded was the NCBS. Created in 1976, it has since become the discipline’s preeminent professional organization. It is committed to the development of academic and community programs and to the promotion of excellence and social responsibility. It is open to cooperation with educators and students as well as with members of other professional and community organizations. Notable among its achievements are the establishment of an accreditation process for the discipline’s programs, the creation of specialty caucuses, the organization of workshops on multicultural education and Black women’s issues, and collaboration with the AHSA, the Congressional Black Caucus, and other academic, professional, and community organizations. It is also credited with the founding of the International Journal of Africana Studies (formerly The Afrocentric Scholar), which is now a leading journal for the discipline. The Afro oce entricc Persspecctiv ve
The emergence of the Afrocentric perspective during the 1980s marked an important development in the discipline. Its basic requirements are that any analysis of phenomena from the African world should be grounded in an African worldview, history, traditions, and agency. The initial case for this perspective was made by Molefi Asante in 1980. With this and subsequent works, he promoted it as a vital theoretical and methodological tool for Black Studies. In its social implication, it calls for cultural retrieval, community empowerment, and the deconstruction of all types of domination. The concept was critical to the development in 1998 of MA and PhD programs in Black Studies at Temple University, where Asante had become the chair. Since then, several other universities have also developed doctoral programs in the field. The Women n’ss Perrspectiv ve
Another major development in Black Studies is the emergence of Black Women’s Studies as a basic component of the discipline. After a period of inadequate scholarship and discussion of women’s issues, during the 1970s the discipline began to address and correct these serious problems. The process was not easy. It
34
African American Studies
was marked by both continuing inattentiveness and outright resistance. The women in the discipline itself, especially Barbara Christian, Delores Aldridge, and Paula Giddings, waged intellectual and practical struggles. They strove for the creation and maintenance of space for teaching and research in Women’s Studies in particular and in gender studies in general. They critiqued malecentered interpretations of African and human realities, critiqued the relationships that such interpretations engendered and maintained, and offered alternative visions. Their works raised critical issues of race, gender, and class for correctives. During the 1980s and early 1990s, books by the women expanded in various fields, especially literature. Apart from their scholarly works, women academics also played significant roles in the creation and promotion of the two major professional organizations of the discipline: the AHSA and the NCBS. Their persistence has helped tremendously to broaden and augment the discipline. The Multicu ultu ural Persspectiv ve
Another key development in Black Studies is its varied response to the emergence of multiculturalism as discourse and practice. Its genesis may be seen during the 1960s with the Black Student Movement’s demand for an end to exclusive White studies instruction. Their efforts were aided and augmented by White progressives and Third World groups. Proponents demanded an end to Eurocentric epistemology and curriculum in favor of a multicultural education. In this way, they made general academic interrogations possible. Later, other groups such as Native American, Latino, Asian Studies, and Women’s Studies used this tradition and pressed for quality and relevant education. It was at this point that multiculturalism was recognized as a necessary component of quality education. The Classiccal Perrspectiv ve
A significant development in the discipline emerged during the 1980s when several scholars began to focus on the study of classical African civilizations, particularly Egypt. The popular subjects were art, culture, language and literature, religion, and philosophy. In 1978, the Kemetic Institute in Chicago, dedicated to the recovery of ancient Egypt’s legacy, was founded. And a year later, the Kawaida Institute
of Pan-African Studies in Los Angeles also directed its attention to the study of Egypt. During the 1980s, owing to the convergence of a number of academic and practical activities in the United States, the cause of Egypt as an intellectual paradigm received a major boost. First among these was the founding of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) in 1984 by Maulana Karenga and Jacob Carruthers. A second major factor was the activities of the Nile Valley Civilization group headed by Ivan Van Sertima. A third factor was the increasing familiarity with, and receptivity to, the works of Cheikh Anta Diop and, to a lesser degree, those of his student and colleague, Theophile Obenga. The works of these two scholars had a positive impact on many African American scholars. Diop is credited with pioneering the African focus on Egypt as a classical civilization. In his major works, he delineated the Black character of ancient Egypt and its role in African and world history.
Record of Accomplishment Today, African American Studies has emerged as a fully fledged discipline, but it is yet to settle on a single name. Therefore, it goes by different names—Africana Studies; Afro-American Studies; African American and African Studies; African American, African, and Caribbean Studies; Black Studies; and Africology. However, the lack of a single name does not seem to be a major issue for the discipline at the moment. All of the programs and departments are united in their focus on the systematic study of continental and diasporan African peoples in their struggles against racism and social, political, and economic oppression. So far, they have experienced some significant successes. Graduates in African American Studies become prime candidates for positions in teaching, social work, social research, law, law enforcement, civic and community organizations, and municipal, state, and federal government as well as cultural– historical societies. Research centers at several universities are devoted to the evolution of scholarship in African American Studies. Nevertheless, there is room for further development. For one thing, as a discipline committed to a comprehensive study of the lives and cultures of African peoples, some scholars believe that its current range should be expanded to embrace the physical and natural sciences. This does not mean a study of “Black
African American Women and Work
Science,” “Black Physics,” or “Black Chemistry” as such; rather, it means the incorporation of the insights and values from new fields of science and technology into an Africana Studies framework. Calls have also been issued for programs and departments to revisit their community development agenda and enhance their collaboration with community members, schools, cultural institutions, and civil and religious leaders. A development in this direction was the establishment in 2006 of a Center for African American Research and Public Policy within the Department of African American Studies at Temple University. The center strives to generate grants and create an atmosphere where research on the policies and trends affecting the Philadelphia African American community are actively engaged by Temple scholars and local community leaders. Abu S. Abarry See also Afrocentricity; Asian American Studies; Black Power; Higher Education; Latina/o Studies
Further Readings
Aldridge, Delores and Carlene Young, eds. 2001. Out of the Revolution. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Anderson, Talmudge. 1990. Black Studies: Theory, Method, and Cultural Perspectives. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Asante, Molefi. 1980. Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Buffalo, NY: Amulefi Publishing. Asante, Molefi and Abu Abarry. 1996. African Intellectual Heritage. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Asante, Molefi and Maulana Karenga, eds. 2006. Black Studies Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1991. Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. New York: Lawrence Hill Books. Hull, Gloria, Patricia Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. 1982. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press. Karenga, Maulana. 2002. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press. Marable, Manning. 2000. Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African-American Experience. New York: Columbia University Press. Norment, Nathaniel, Jr. 2007. The African-American Studies Reader. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Turner, James. 1984. The Next Decade: Theoretical and Research Issues in Africana Studies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Africana Studies and Research Center.
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AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND WORK African American women’s work and its history is, in many crucial respects, the history of the United States. Although most Black women have labored in the most back-breaking work, during more recent years some have also held the most prestigious and attractive jobs. Thus, African American women’s labor spans the labor economy and market, from menial service jobs to high-powered information and entertainment work. The proportion of Black women participating in the labor market has always outstripped that same proportion of White women, and this fact alone brings their work history to the forefront of Black culture in U.S. society. Locked out, like White women, from most highwage employment until quite recently, and paid even lower wages than their White women counterparts, it is likely that African American women have worked more actual hours during their work lives than has any other group in U.S. history. This entry looks at overall historical patterns of their work, in particular their relegation to domestic and service jobs; the impact of racial and sex discrimination; and relatively recent improvements in their job opportunities.
Historical Patterns The labor market history of Black American women in many ways parallels that of all U.S. women, especially in terms of restrictions and exclusions. It differs in its intensity and stability; more African American women have always worked for pay, remaining in the labor force across time and the vicissitudes of culture. Work, whether paid or unpaid, is the defining feature of African American women’s lives in modern postemancipation society. This is also true, in a relative sense, for women as a whole. The proportion of women’s labor is greater, on a global calculus, than that of men’s labor. As with women in general, African American women have labored in a host of work roles, both formal and informal, since the end of slavery. Formal occupational roles exist in the official tracked labor economy and are linked to systems of rationalized taxed wages and benefits. People employed in the formal labor economy are entitled to legal and governmental protections, and there are demonstrable
36
African American Women and Work
For many decades after emancipation, only a narrow occupational area was open to African American women, and entry to jobs with career ladders and organizational stability was severely restricted. Although still clustered in the service sector, African American women, with increasing educational attainment over the past half-century, have broadened their representation across an array of higher wage service jobs and professions. In education, the arts, and medicine, some Black women did attain relatively stable careercentered jobs, but most Black women worked in low- to mid-level service occupations until the late 20th century.
African American women sorting tobacco (circa 1899). Labor and work for Black women in the United States have a very long history, beginning with unpaid slavery. With emancipation, women entered a wider array of occupations. Here, African Americans (mostly women) sort tobacco at the T. B. Williams Tobacco Company, Richmond, Virginia. This photo was part of the Exhibit of American Negroes organized for the 1900 Paris Exposition through a collaborative creation of Black colleges and universities and the Library of Congress. The driving force behind the exhibit was the Black sociologist and historian William Edgar Burghardt Du Bois. He described the materials sent to Paris as “an honest straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by them. In a way this marks an era in the history of the Negroes of America.”
Service Work and Domestic Employment
Until the decades following World War II, African American women worked most often in formal or informal domestic service sector employment. Because no records are kept of informal cash-based employment, the numbers are very difficult to estimate and impossible to know for certain. Black women have traditionally been overrepresented in jobs caring for Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. children and cleaning. A hierarchy of class and status records of their work-based positions and histories. existed within the sphere of domestic employment for The informal economy, in contrast, contains a Black women. These status distinctions were upheld plethora of jobs and products in a shadow structure of by both races, albeit in different ways and probably cash-based untaxed labor and goods. for different reasons. Among Black women workers, For many decades, African American women were status became a primary source of occupational and restricted to the bottom rungs of the occupational ladself-identity. Whites primarily recognized a wage der and often within the informal sector. Across the hierarchy. Thus, in southern culture, a Black woman world, a higher proportion of minority power social recognized and hired as a baby nurse enjoyed considgroups participate in the cash economy than do groups erable prestige in her home community—a fact with more social and cultural power. Given the higher acknowledged in her relatively better wages and prostatus usually accorded to those with lighter skin, the tected task array (e.g., she was never expected to clean work of non-White women in the global economy is things). The role of Black women in the care and raisin many ways linked to this informal, personalized, ing of White children remains an underacknowledged and cash-based economy. mainstay of U.S. family life—especially in the South. In the formal U.S. labor market, Black women work Baby nursing, housekeeping, and child minding were in an ever widening distribution of occupational roles. positions of some prestige and authority in southern
African American Women and Work
37
culture and among the few routes out of “dead end” work. Black women in domestic service roles worked most often in White people’s homes. Caring for the household of an employer usually meant that the domestic worker herself was unable to fully provide these services for her own family. Thus, other women (often relatives) were drawn into Black women’s domestic sphere to complete the work left undone by outside domestic employment. The opportunity cost of working a primary job at depressed wages continues to be very high, although the pattern of using one’s relatives to support family work is no longer as prevalent among employed Black women.
With their family economy rooted in artificially depressed discriminatory wages for both adults, Black women very often labored beyond even the now famous “second shift,” keeping their own and other women’s households afloat and adding other paid labor besides. When at all possible (especially after World War II and the northward migration of many southern Black families), African American women stayed at home to raise their children. Economic pressures and discrimination often made this difficult without the addition of some extra work such as paid child care. Formal schooling was then, as now, the primary route to relative economic stability for African American families.
Labor Market Segregation: Sex and Race
Expansion of Labor Force Participation
African American women’s experience in the work world grew from their various yet common experiences as Black women in a society at first built on slavery and later irrevocably shaped by its effects. For many decades, Black people faced nearly overwhelming odds of survival at work, especially in heavy industrial jobs and other sorts of dangerous employment. Issues shaping African Americans’ physical and economic survival within U.S. industrial and service jobs have consistently impeded the group’s full share of prosperity from the era of slavery to the present day. Until recently, this was especially true for Black women; patterns of sexual and racial segregation in the workplace obstructed any real progress toward occupational stability. Racial and sexual labor force segregation patterns developed across time and kept all women, and Black women in particular, restricted to certain industrial, service, and professional occupations. In the United States, such patterns varied somewhat by region. The West’s more flexible political and labor economy is well documented. In the South, the twin forces of sex and race-based segregation combined to prevent full and dynamic labor force participation for Black women. The social and cultural forces pressing African American women into prostitution and related dangers within the informal economy operated across all regions of the country, but their influence was especially pernicious in the urban areas of the Eastern Seaboard and the industrialized Midwest.
The feminization of paid work during World War II had a famously backhanded effect on women’s labor force participation experiences. The temporary easing of sex- and race-based occupational restrictions brought previously unimaginable possibilities for paid work into women’s lives. In 1945, when the labor market began to shift back to a preference for (White) males, African American women were the most economically vulnerable workers. The monetary and employment gains of the war years fell away quickly, but the effect was softened by the rising tide of Black educational attainment and the growing tidal force of the Civil Rights Movement. Institutionalized sexism and racism began to decline during the 1950s, creating a social climate for Black women driven by slowly climbing levels of educational and occupational attainment. This gradual rise in levels of formal schooling and occupational prestige and stability marks the contemporary world of African American workers as well. Wage gaps persist, even if narrowing, between Black and White workers and between men and women. Black females continue to bear the brunt of those gaps. In the contemporary United States, the term African American women collapses an array of ethnic and historical family backgrounds into an aggregate category that is convenient for demographic analysis yet far from reflecting its true diversity. Both a Black female medical doctor who is the descendant of slaves and an urban Haitian immigrant employed in the cash economy are classed together under that rubric. This fact makes
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Africans in the United States
generalizations about Black women’s contemporary labor force experiences difficult. It is better to note the historical patterns of disadvantage and response conditioning this group’s now stunning diversity of form in relation to paid and unpaid work in the United States. Corinne Lally Benedetto See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African Americans; American Apartheid; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Domestic Work; Educational Performance and Attainment; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Glass Ceiling; hooks, bell; Informal Economy; Labor Market Segmentation
Further Readings
Aptheker, Bettina. 1982. Women’s Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Durr, Marlese and Shirley Hill, eds. 2002. “AfricanAmerican Women: Gender Roles, Work, and the Political Economy in the Twenty-First Century [special issue].” Gender & Society 16:437–563. Lerner, Gerda. 1972. Black Women and White America: A Documentary History. New York: Pantheon Books. Tucker, Susan. 1988. Telling Memories among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
AFRICANS
IN THE
UNITED STATES
Africans living in the United States can be from fiftythree different countries—from Algeria, Angola, and Benin, through Mauritania and Morocco, to Zambia and Zimbabwe. In addition, every nation on the African continent has much ethnic diversity within its borders. For instance, in Tanzania alone, there are more than 130 ethnic groups, with nearly as many distinct languages. More than 900 million people live on the African continent, and more than 1,500 languages are spoken. African immigrants to the United States have contributed greatly to their communities of settlement with African churches and mosques; Ethiopian, Senegalese, and other African restaurants; African hair braiding salons; taxi drivers or nursing home care providers who might be Somalian, Liberian, Eritrean, or Sierra Leonian; medical doctors from Nigeria and other African nations; and African professors and teachers from many different countries. Many African-born
Senegalese woman in New York. A Senegalese woman is shown walking by a store in Little Senegal, an area in Harlem, New York, at 116th Street and 7th Avenue. The numbers of Africans settling in the United States has increased to the point that businesses catering to them have begun to emerge in many cities. Source: Aurora/Getty Images.
residents in the United States are urbanized, and they have one of the highest education levels of any immigrant group. An African living in the United States could be an entrepreneur or a refugee, a doctor or a PhD, an accountant or a student, rich or poor. Thus, in many ways, it is difficult to generalize about the experience of Africans in the United States. This entry, then, focuses on cultural and social values that appear to be common among people from Africa and how those values intersect with those of U.S. society, in particular regarding issues of community, family, and race.
African Values in a New World Africans who come to the United States bring with them a rich cultural heritage, a strong work ethic, and
Africans in the United States
a wide array of skills that they are enthusiastic to share, and America has been enriched by their literature, music, and dance. They bring a strong commitment to education, a sense of hospitality, a long and rich history of many cultures and traditions, a facility with languages (some Africans speak five or more languages), and a strong sense of community. An African is first a son or daughter, then a member of a village or ethnic group such as Mandingo or Fanti, and then a citizen of a country such as Guinea or Ghana. Ethnicity comes before nationality on the continent. When Africans travel outside of their country, nationality may become a prominent self-identifier. For most Africans, it is only when they come to the United States that race becomes an identity marker. Even “African” is much less an identity marker on the continent than it is in the United States. Because of a strong sense of responsibility to their extended families and a deep family connectedness that extends well beyond the U.S. notion of a typical family unit, African immigrants also contribute to their home economies. Trying to provide for their immediate families living with them in the United States as well as for family members they left behind in Africa can be a challenge. Caring for the extended family is an integral part of the African culture. Families in Africa may have high expectations of their relatives who emigrate to the United States; there is a common misperception that to have arrived in the United States is to have achieved success. Passing on ancestral traditions and customs to their children is important to most African immigrants, who sometimes are concerned that children born or raised in the United States will grow up to be more “American” than “African.” The African values of community, connection between the spiritual and the physical, circular understanding of history and time, respect for the ancestors and elders, and acknowledgment of the Creator all are challenged by the U.S. values of individualism, capitalism, money, and separation of church and state. One father tells of arriving alone in the United States. He worked nights for many years at a parking garage and took courses during the day to complete his bachelor’s degree. He did this with the sole objective of one day being able to bring his children to the United States for a “good” education. Now that his children have arrived, he is upset about what is happening to them. He is concerned that his children are too rapidly losing their African values and acquiring those that he considers as unacceptable. His children
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now show disrespect for their elders, and this would be unthinkable back home. Nevertheless, like so many, he clings to the belief that a U.S. education is worth more to his children’s future than the education they would have received in his home country. Some Africans, however, have decided to send their children back home to ensure that they will not lose their African values. The communal worldview expressed by ubuntu— “We are, therefore I am”—is a far different perspective from that in the United States, where there is a focus on the importance of the individual. Many Africans have traditionally considered the welcoming of a stranger—any stranger, even someone who is White—as a matter of hospitality that required a warm greeting and a meal as a sign of shared humanity. It can be a shock to Africans who have broken bread with Whites in Africa to sometimes find that they are not welcomed as warmly by U.S. residents. To their dismay, for many Africans, it may be the color of their skin that most influences their actual experiences in the United States.
Africans and Race Along with the spread of religion throughout a large portion of the African continent, European colonialism imposed a new way of looking at race. Colonialism demanded that Africans see Europeans as superior and more intelligent. South Africa’s historical experience of apartheid was both the most severe and the most publicized form of racial discrimination based on skin color. This form of accentuating racism is incomprehensible to Africans. Before they interact with White people, most Africans do not see the color of their skin as having any real significance. For them, skin is something that covers the outer body and is not connected with the individual characteristics or personality, so its color is of dubious importance. “Race,” understood simply as a variant in shades of skin color, is to be appreciated as an asset and not as a deficiency or a social problem. A traditional Malinke story tells how different kinds of snakes can evolve from the cassava snake. In Africa, people of different skin colors are viewed as just another example of nature exercising creativity. For Africans in general, skin color variations are recognized as a continuum of hues, and skin color is not used as a measure of an individual’s worth. Darkness, blackness, and night are not to be feared; they are a part of nature. Ethnicity may be understandable
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Africans in the United States
as an identity marker because culture can dictate behavior. But because behavior can change, whereas skin color cannot change, Africans wonder what creates racism. On arriving in the United States, many Africans learn that they are “Black” first—not Gabonese, Rwandan, or African—and that “being Black” has negative connotations. Administrative forms used by the government or employers that ask about an individual’s “race” seem strange to the African eye because they offer options that are incomprehensible in the African system. Some Africans list “other” to indicate what they believe the forms are requesting about their identification with a particular group, whereas others just leave it blank. The term African American describes Blacks born in the United States. So what does that leave persons from Africa to be? They were not born here, but they have come here.
Other Cultural Hurdles For Africans, the notions of both race and ethnicity are challenged. They are seen as Black until they open their mouths to speak. Then they are foreigners if they have an accent. Many are told not to lose their accent or else they might be confused with being African American. It becomes quickly clear that to be African American in the United States is viewed negatively owing to systemic racism. Negative media stereotypes of Africa, Africans, and African Americans often contribute to strained, rather than mutually supportive, relationships between Africans and African Americans. Most Africans are multilingual/multidialectal, and many may already speak English well but often with an accent that is unfamiliar to Americans. They understand, however, that making an adjustment in language learning may be part of assimilating into the new society. On occasion, however, their accent creates difficulties with communication and a sense of being foreign. When Africans come to the United States, many expect to find a society that has achieved the highest level of success, a land of abundance, and the legendary “land of the free and home of the brave.” There is a general expectation that their lives will be easier when they get to the United States, but for many Africans who emigrate it is not so easy. The situation of those who have family members already in
the United States, or who come with jobs or financial stability, differs from that of Africans who arrive as refugees sponsored by churches and nongovernmental organizations and of those who arrive on their own with little or no support. However, it is almost inevitable that Africans arriving in the United States will be confronted with some form of racism. Some of it is rooted in cultural ignorance. Africans are often surprised to be asked questions such as “Did you wear clothes in Africa?” and “Did you have lions in your yard?” The notion that Africa is uncivilized remains strong; in the imagination, it is a land of jungles, and the familiar figure of Tarzan remains intact as an iconic image of Africa even today. Africans are surprised when U.S. residents do not know that Africa is a continent, not a country. Africans in the United States bring with them a wealth of experiences and cultural riches that might not fully prepare them for the eventual clash with the reality of life in the United States or the ways in which an individual’s physical characteristics can be used as a focus for judgment. Rosemary Traoré See Appendix A See also Afrocentricity; Cape Verde; Colonialism; Diaspora; Kenya; Kwanzaa; Muslim Americans; Nigeria; Nigerian Americans; Popular Culture, Racism and; Refugees; South Africa, Republic of;
Further Readings
Asante, Molefi Kete. 2007. The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony. London: Routledge. Ethnologue.com. n.d. Languages of Tanzania. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.ethnologue.com/ show_country.asp?name=Tanzania Hilliard, Asa G. 1997. SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind. Gainesville, FL: Makare. Omotosho, Samson A. 2005. Being an African Student: Stories of Opportunity and Determination. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Population Reference Bureau. 2006. 2006 World Population Data Sheet. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.prb.org/pdf06/06WorldDataSheet.pdf Traoré, Rosemary and Robert J. Lukens. 2006. This Isn’t the America I Thought I’d Find: African Students in the Urban U.S. High School. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Afrocentricity
AFROCENTRICITY Afrocentricity is a philosophical paradigm that emphasizes the centrality of the African person within historical context. As such, it is a rejection of the marginality and alterity often expressed in the ordinary paradigm of European domination. What is more, Afrocentrists articulate a counterhegemonic view that questions epistemological ideas that are simply rooted in the cultural experiences of Europe. In its attempt to shift discourse about African phenomena from ideas founded in European constructs to a more centered perspective, Afrocentricity announces itself as a form of antiracist, antibourgeois, and antisexist ideology that is new, innovative, challenging, and capable of creating exciting ways in which to acquire knowledge. The denial of this exploitative expression of race, gender, and class found in the European construction of knowledge is at once controversial and a part of the evolving process of the development of this paradigm. This entry discusses the background and principal elements of Afrocentricity.
Development of the Concept The origin of Afrocentricity is traced to the publication of the book Afrocentricity in l980 by Molefi Kete Asante. Additional books and articles helped to create the discourse that thrust the concept into the intellectual world as a perspective whose core was the interpretation and explanation of phenomena from the standpoint of Africans as subjects rather than as victims or objects. Central to the Afrocentric idea is the fact that Africans were moved off of intellectual, philosophical, and cultural terms by the 500 years of European hegemony. To return to an authentic consciousness, it was necessary for African people to see themselves in the midst of their own history and not as in the margins of Europe. This meant that it was essential to return to the classical civilizations of Africa. Thus, the return to a discussion of the ancient African civilizations of Egypt and Nubia was essential for an appreciation of the role that Africans and Africa played in world history. The Afrocentrists were the first to see the overthrow of European domination in the African’s mind by a return to classical Africa. Besides its acceptance of classical Africa, Afrocentricity was
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grounded in the historical reality of African people through the presentation of key intellectual ideas. For example, it was important to contend that the Eurocentric view had become an ethnocentric view that elevated the European experience and downgraded all others. For the Afrocentrists, it was clear that Afrocentricity was not the counterpoint to Eurocentricity but rather a particular perspective for analysis that did not seek to occupy all space and time as Eurocentrism has often done. For example, to say classical music, theater, or dance is usually a reference to European music, theater, or dance. However, this means that Europeans occupy all of the intellectual and artistic seats and leave no room for others. The Afrocentrists argue for pluralism in philosophical views without hierarchy. All human cultures must be centered, in fact, subject of their own realities.
Principal Ideas In the Afrocentric view, the problem of location takes precedence over the topic or the data under consideration. Two methodological devices have emerged to assist in the construction of a new body of knowledge: reasonable plausibility and intelligent conclusion. Both are common terms used in a definite and precise sense to deal with the issue of historical, social, and cultural lacunae in many discourses on African people. Although seen as speculative supports, these devices are central to understanding how Africans responded in situations where there was little information. Reasonable plausibility is based on Martin Bernal’s thesis of explaining lacunae in historical information. One can assume that the ancient Greeks who lived and traveled in ancient Egypt were exposed to certain Egyptian values, ideas, and behaviors. Even if there are no documents stating that Plato or Lycurgus was actually in the great city of Waset, reasonable plausibility would allow the researcher to make a highly probable statement of fact. Intelligent conclusion is derived from the work of Asante and is based on analysis of prejudicial and racist reportage in texts. When one knows by circumstances, effects, and policies that Africans were involved in an event or a phenomenon, despite the lack of direct information, one can make an intelligent conclusion. The records of the Great Storm of 1928 in Florida reveal little about the role that Africans played
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Aging
in the economy prior to the storm. One could even get the impression that Africans were marginal to the society and the economy by reading the biased accounts of history. However, more than two-thirds of the nearly 3,000 killed by the storm were Africans, indicating an enormous agricultural laboring sector that can be missed if one does not make an intelligent conclusion. Afrocentrists contend that humans cannot divest themselves of culture, whether participating in their own historical culture or that of some other group. A contradiction between history and perspective produces a kind of incongruity that is called decenteredness. Thus, when an African American writes from the viewpoint of Europeans who came to the Americas on the Mayflower, or when literary critics write of Africans as “the other,” Afrocentrists claim that Africans are being peripheralized within their own story.
Afrocentrist Work Metaphors of location and dislocation are the principal tools of analysis as events, situations, texts, buildings, dreams, and literary authors are seen as displaying various forms of centeredness. To be centered is to be located as an agent instead of as “the other.” Such a critical shift in thinking means that the Afrocentric perspective provides new insights and dimensions to the understanding of phenomena. Among the scholars writing in this vein are Ama Mazama, Mark Christian, Maulana Karenga, Wade Nobles, Adisa Alkebulan, Troy Allen, Katherine Bankole, and Marimba Ani. Mazama was one of the original Afrocentrists identified with the Temple University Circle of Afrocentricity of which Asante was a leading member. Contemporary issues in Afrocentric thinking have involved the explanation of psychological misorientation and disorientation—attitudes that affect Africans who consider themselves to be Europeans or who believe that it is impossible to be both African and human. Severe forms of this attitude have been labeled as extreme misorientation by some Afrocentrists. Additional issues have been the influence of a centered approach to education, particularly as it relates to the revision of the U.S. educational curriculum. Hundreds of dissertations and numerous books and articles have been written extending the idea of Afrocentricity in architecture, social work, religion, politics, criminology, and philosophy. Molefi Kete Asante
See also African Americans; African American Studies; Black Nationalism; Ethnocentrism; Kwanzaa Further Readings
Asante, Molefi Kete. 1990. Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Asante, Molefi Kete. 1998. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Asante, Molefi Kete. 2002. Afrocentricity . Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Asante, Molefi Kete. 2007. Afrocentric Manifesto: Toward an African Renaissance. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Conyers, James L., Jr., ed. 2003. Afrocentricity and the Academy: Essays on Theory and Practice. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Conyers, James L., Jr. 2004. “The Evolution of Africology: An Afrocentric Appraisal.” Journal of Black Studies 34:640–652. Early, Gerald. 1994. “Defining Afrocentrism.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 1(Winter):46. Mazama, Ama, ed. 2003. The Afrocentric Paradigm. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
AGING Aging refers to the process of getting older. People age at different rates and in different ways, influenced by cultural, social, biological, and economical factors. Race and ethnicity may also play a major role in how people experience aging. Since the beginning of the 20th century, improvements have been made in health care, nutrition, and public health. These improvements have greatly affected the longevity of different groups of people; however, not all groups of people have benefited equally. More often, the poor health status and life expectancies of minorities can be traced back to historical racial/ethnic discrimination and treatment of minority groups. This entry looks at the demographics of aging and discusses issues related to social support, health, and economic well-being—all with a focus on differences related to race and ethnicity.
Demographic Overview Life expectancy is typically measured by averaging the number of years that people in a given population can expect to live. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2003 indicate that the life expectancy at birth for all races was 77.5 years. However, there is a gap in life expectancies when accounting for race and gender.
Aging
The life expectancy at birth for White males was 75.3 years and for White females was 80.5 years. Comparatively, the life expectancy for Black males was 69.0 years and for Black females was 76.1 years. Three terms are commonly used to describe the old. Individuals between 65 and 75 years of age are referred to as the young old, individuals between 75 and 85 years of age are referred to as the old old, and individuals over 85 years of age are referred to as the oldest old. With people living longer than in previous times, the total amount and proportion of older people in the U.S. population is growing. For instance, the older population now constitutes approximately 12% of the total U.S. population. At the same time, the number of individuals living past 100 years of age, or centenarians, has increased during the past century as well. A large birth rate between the years 1946 and 1964 produced more than 70 million people. Demographers label this cohort of births the “baby boom” population. The first wave of the baby boomers will turn 65 years of age in 2011. The mass amounts of people aging are expected to put a strain on society’s resources and institutions. Economic issues such as age of retirement, living arrangements, and costs of health care are of great and real concern because of the enormous pressures placed on government programs such as social security and Medicare benefits as means of support. Consequently, social institutions will also need to become flexible to meet the needs of a diverse population whose members might not have, or might never have had, equal treatment and resources in the society. Reflecting the demographic changes of the U.S. population over the past decades, the older population will become more diverse. In 2003, the breakdown of the older (65+ years) U.S. population was as follows: non-Hispanic White, 82%; Black, 8%; Hispanic (of any race), 6%; Asian, 3%; and Native American, less than 1%. However, projections for 2050 indicate that the pattern is shifting. The Hispanic population is projected to grow the fastest, from just over 2 million in 2003 to 15 million in 2050, and to be larger than the older Black population by 2028. The diverse population of older people presents special issues and special needs.
Marital Status and Living Arrangements Marital status and living arrangements can affect personal well-being both emotionally and economically. Older men are more likely than older women to be
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married. That is because women are more likely to be widows than men are to be widowers. On average, women live longer, so they spend more time alone as they get older, whereas men are likely to be married until they die. The living arrangements of the elderly include living with a spouse, living with other relatives, living with nonrelatives (or in institutions such as nursing homes and hospitals), and living alone. Older men are more likely to live with a spouse than are older women. In contrast, as mentioned, older women are more likely to live alone. Living arrangements of older people differ by race as well. For instance, Asian women are more likely than women of other races to live with relatives other than a spouse, whereas White and Black women are more likely to live alone. However, Black men are the most likely to live alone. Living alone creates its own set of issues such as proper monitoring of health and depression. The living arrangements of the elderly are important factors because they are often linked to income, health status, and availability of caregivers. Also, people who live alone are more likely to be in poverty than are people who live with a spouse. Social networks, such as family and/or a spouse, provide the elderly with positive support both by encouraging healthy behaviors and by providing a safety net of individuals who can be counted on for any physical, emotional, and/or financial assistance. Stages of life, such as retirement and widowhood, can cause isolation and depression in the elderly. Many families now live apart from one another, creating the issue of lack of immediate assistance for the elderly. With family members so far away, issues such as adequate housing and a safe environment become concerns. Not having these basic needs leaves a portion of the elderly vulnerable and isolated. Also, lack of economic resources or the perception thereof places a burden on the elderly and contributes to disparity in mortality of some groups. Due to a cultural emphasis on independence, many elderly do not wish to burden family members. The caregiving issue has created a “sandwich generation”— a generation of people who are caring for their children and their aged parents at the same time. This puts quite a strain on the family, especially the women of the household, in that they are often the caretakers of elderly family members. Recent research has also begun to focus on the effects of kin support, in light of the national divorce trends.
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Aging
Health
Economics
There has been an “epidemiologic transition,” that is, a shift from infectious and acute diseases to chronic and degenerative diseases as reasons for mortality. Therefore, a cultural emphasis on preventing illness and maintaining health has emerged along with a “successful aging” approach. The top five causes of death for ages over 65 years are heart disease, cancer, stroke, emphysema, and pneumonia. These diseases are often referred to as “lifestyle” diseases, that is, diseases that trace to poor diet, obesity, lack of exercise, and/or cigarette smoking. These shifts in lifestyle account for much of the change in mortality rates over the past few decades. The leading cause of death differs by group. Compared with Whites, Black Americans’ mortality rates are higher for stroke, heart disease, cancer, and HIV disease. Native Americans have the highest cancer mortality rate—approximately 40% higher than the rest of the population. Concurrently, Native Americans and Alaska Natives have considerably worse health outcomes—including higher infant mortality rates, more disease and disability, and shorter life expectancies—than much of the rest of the United States. Healthy behaviors have a significant effect on one’s health status later in life. The risk factors that interfere with successful aging include smoking, alcohol abuse, depression, and lack of exercise. The top five sources of disability include diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, hearing impairment, and cataracts. Many elderly will move to nursing homes because of disability concerns as well as the need for assistance and management with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, and eating. Minority and low socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are likely to experience health disparities, or a gap in the quality of health and health care, in comparison with wealthier and/or White groups. Negative social and environmental factors (e.g., poor housing/neighborhood), health-related behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol, poor eating habits/lack of nutrition), access to and use of health services (e.g., having health insurance/education on prevention), and quality of health care received further affect physical, cognitive, and emotional functioning later in life. Racial disparities that seem profound today can often be traced to a history of racial/ethnic discrimination in the United States.
Social security benefits are the largest source of income for the elderly and are received by most households. Other sources of income include earnings, asset income, and pensions. However, there is much inequality in income of the elderly. This can be attributed to employment patterns over the life course and is reflected in the differences in the sources of income for the elderly. For example, because Whites are more likely to have more assets and pensions, a smaller portion of their income derives from social security, whereas it accounts for the majority of minorities’ income. Those who spend their time in low-wage service sector jobs, agricultural, and domestic realms (mainly women and minorities) are often unable to save for retirement because the employers for whom they work rarely offered health or retirement benefits. Others who fall into this category are those who started saving too late and could not make up for earlier shortfalls and/or had their work histories interrupted by familial responsibilities. Studying aging requires a multifaceted approach in that the social, cultural, and economic characteristics all play a part in how people experience aging. Furthermore, historical racial/ethnic discrimination also has a significant impact on how one experiences aging. Keeping up with changing demographics will be a challenge to the society. In particular, social institutions will require more diversity in the type of resources available for the aging U.S. population. Jennifer M. Klein See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Familism; Family; Hispanics; Native Americans; Social Inequality; Social Support
Further Readings
Budrys, G. 2003. Unequal Health: How Inequality Contributes to Health and Illness. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Keith, J. 1994. Aging Experience: Diversity and Commonality across Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Klinenberg, E. 2002. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rowe, John W. and Robert Louis Kahn, 1998. Successful Aging. New York: Pantheon Books. Smedley, Brian D., Adrienne Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson. 2003. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Alamo, The
ALAMO, THE The Alamo, originally named Misión San Antonio de Valero, was built in 1724 and served as a home to Spanish missionaries and Indian converts. It is located in what is today San Antonio, Texas. During the early 1800s, the Spanish army stationed a cavalry unit at the mission and named it the “Alamo” (meaning “cottonwood” in Spanish) in honor of their hometown, Alamo de Parras, Coahuila, Mexico. During the Mexican revolution for independence from Spain, the fortress had been in the hands of both revolutionaries and royalists. It remained in the hands of the Mexican army until December 1835, amid the Texas Revolution, when the rebel Texans captured the fort by driving Mexican forces out of San Antonio de Bexar. Soon after, in February 1836, Mexican forces sought to recapture the Alamo in a battle that made the fort famous and a shrine to Texan patriots to this day. The siege of the Alamo began on February 23 and lasted 13 days, ending on March 6 when Mexican forces permeated the walls of the fort. The Mexican president-cum-dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, assembled a force to quell the Texan rebellion and retake the Alamo. The Texan rebels, made up of Texians (Anglo-American settlers) and local Tejanos (ethnic Mexicans of Tejas), were determined to hold the fort despite the news from Commander William Travis that reinforcements would not come. A small band of 33 men from Gonzales, Texas, would later join the Alamo garrison. On March 2, Texas declared independence in the midst of the Alamo battle, unbeknownst to the defenders, who sent a vote in favor of independence to the constitutional convention at Washington-on-theBrazos. Among the defenders of the Alamo were some local heroes and national icons. David Crockett, former Tennessee congressman and legendary frontiersman, was among the Texian patriots who gave their lives for the Alamo and for Texas. Famous knife fighter James Bowie was in command of a volunteer force defending the Alamo. Tejano political and military hero Juan Seguín was among the Alamo defenders as well and was sent out as a courier in request of more troops. The Alamo defenders were a diverse force. Americans from the north and south, Western Europeans, Tejano natives, and Black slaves all fought and died at the Alamo. They banded together in a fight against the increasing centralization of the
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Mexican government under Santa Anna, who rose to power in a coup and abolished the Constitution of 1824. This encroachment on autonomy is what sparked the Texas Revolution, and the Alamo became a symbol of that resistance. After killing most of the Alamo garrison, Mexican forces continued through the town of San Antonio de Bexar, setting fire to homes and abusing locals. The loss at the Alamo stirred a fire in the hearts of Texians and Tejanos. The subsequent victory of Texan forces at the Battle of San Jacinto solidified Texan independence and identity. Texan soldiers cried out “Remember the Alamo” in memory of their fallen compatriots. The brutality of Santa Anna’s forces in the wake of the Alamo perpetuated and intensified anti-Mexican sentiments among Texas’s Anglo population. The Alamo was yet another catalyst for tension during an immutable conflict between Mexico and Texas. Decades after the Alamo, Tejano sacrifices were ignored. The folklore, emphasizing a Texan defeat over inferior Mexicans during the subsequent Battle of San Jacinto and the Texas Revolution, shaped the attitudes of Texans. As a result, Texas landowners felt warranted in their mistreatment of Mexican laborers. This discrimination was not reserved only for Mexicans; it also extended to Mexican Texans who were thought of as being untrustworthy. Although the majority of Tejanos had sided with Texas during the revolution, they still sympathized with the Mexican cause. Many of them had friends and family members fighting for Mexico. Of course, the Alamo was not the lone agitator. AntiAnglo sentiment on the part of Mexicans and Santa Anna’s postrevolution assault on Texas borderlands further embittered Texans. The facts surrounding the battle itself remain a subject of debate. Accounts of the Alamo were told by the survivors on both sides and are engrossed with nationalistic folklore. In this sense, the Battle of the Alamo epitomizes the historically conflicted relationship between Texas and Mexico. George J. Fachner, Jr., and Ted Henken See also Aztlán; Borderlands; Cross-Frontier Contact; Ethnoviolence; La Raza; La Raza Unida Party; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); “Wetbacks” Further Readings
Campbell, R. 2003. Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning
Matovina, T. 1995. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press. Montejano, D. 1987. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986. Austin: University of Texas Press.
ALASKAN NATIVES, LEGISLATION CONCERNING The United States has passed a number of laws related to Native Americans, some applying specifically to Alaska and others concerning Native Americans as a whole. The earliest of these, passed on May 17, 1884, was called the Organic Law and established a form of government, a set of laws, and education for all races. After the turn of the 20th century, the Native Allotment Act of 1906 provided homesteading parcels for Native Alaskans averaging 40 acres. Only 100 or so have been allotted. After Alaska became a territory in 1912, a state legislature was created and Juneau became the capital. In 1959, Alaska became a state. The Alaskan Native Leaders have been involved with the politics throughout the changes that have taken place in Alaska, from tribal in their beginnings to an international level today. Since 1924 with William L. Paul becoming the first Alaska Native elected to the territorial legislature, the Aboriginal Peoples of Alaska have played an increasing role in the creation and enforcement of laws concerning their people. The following paragraphs examine some of those laws. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. This bill decrees that Indigenous Peoples within the United States and its territories have U.S. citizenship, rights, and property. However, the Aleuts on the Pribilof Islands, St. George and St. Paul, lived in virtual servitude, forbidden to leave their islands. During World War II, the Aleuts were evacuated and sent to internment camps in Southeast Alaska, where they discovered the freedoms enjoyed by the Southeast Alaskan Natives and so sought assistance for their emancipation. Duck Stamp Act of 1934. This law required a federal license for the hunting of migratory birds and prohibited Alaska Natives from partaking in the right to hunt and gather eggs for their traditional foods due to the Canadian and U.S. migratory bird treaty. The latter
treaty was amended in 1996 to include Alaska Natives. Equal Rights Bill of February 16, 1944. In response to severe prejudicial treatment toward minorities, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the related Sisterhood organization lobbied against racial discrimination. The bill called for “full and equal” rights for “all citizens.” Alaska Statehood, 1959. As part of the Alaskan Statehood Act, 103 million acres were allotted for federal land without regard for the indigenous tribal properties or hunting, fishing, and gathering areas. Land claims were filed with the Indian Claims Commission, implementing a freeze on the lands. International attention was aroused when this freeze affected the Trans-Alaska Pipeline project, and that expedited the negotiation process. More than 400 proponents from Native communities congregated, forming the Alaska Federation of Natives, to unify Alaska Natives’ voice and lobby for the Land Claims Bill. Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, December 18, 1971. In one fell swoop, Congress replaced tribalism with corporatism. Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations were allotted $962.5 million and 44 million acres. The Natives were divided among 13 regions and 12 corporations, with the 13th region receiving monetary allotments rather than land. Natives possessing less than one-quarter Alaskan Native blood or born after 1971 were denied shareholder status unless they inherited shares. Inupiat Howard Rock formed the newspaper Tundra Times for the very purpose of informing the general public of this issue and other Alaskan Aboriginal issues. The Language Bills, June 9, 1972. State-operated schools are mandated to teach languages used by Indigenous Peoples such as Tlingit. The bill also established the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, which has been the leading center for the Eskimo and Athabaskan languages and has become a partner in the preservation of languages worldwide. Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act, December 2, 1980. Rural Alaskan residents were given preeminence concerning fish and game, for subsistence endeavors, over that of sport or commercial purposes.
Albanian Americans
Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, 1988. February 16 marks the commendation of Elizabeth Peratrovich, Tlingit civil rights leader and grand president of the Alaskan Native Sisterhood. She directed the campaign against racial prejudice and discrimination, and her leadership and inspirational speech affected the passage of the “equal rights” law. Alaska Native Veterans Bill, 1998. Veterans serving in the Vietnam War were unable to apply for lands prior to the 1971 Native Allotment deadline. Through this bill, veterans have applied for land parcels. The bill was amended in 2006. Pamela Rae Huteson See Appendix A See also Aleuts; Native Americans; Reservation System; Tlingit Further Readings
Boyle, Francis A. 2003. Proclamation for an Independent Nation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Chance, Norman A. 1990. The Inupiat and Arctic Alaska: An Ethnography of Development. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, Brace. Krauss, Michael E. 1974. “Alaskan Native Language Legislation.” International Journal of American Linguistics 40:150–152. Morgan, Lael. 1988. Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock. Fairbanks, AK: Epicenter. Thomas, Edward K., Sharon Olsen, and Wanda Culp, comps. 1991. A Recollection of Civil Rights Leader Elizabeth Peratrovich 1911–1958. Sponsored by Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand Camp and Alaska Native Sisterhood Grand Camp, and Sealaska Corporation.
a change in its composition, the community has also been active in promoting the independence of the Albanian-inhabited region of Kosovo from Serbia. The foundations of the Albanian American community were laid in 1892 when seventeen young Albanian males settled in the United States. There was only a modest increase in Albanian immigration to the United States during the remainder of the 19th century, but the flow of Albanians then accelerated until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During this period, most Albanians entered the United States using Turkish passports because Albania did not win its independence from the Ottoman Empire until 1912. Thus, it is difficult to determine precisely the size of the Albanian American community; however, by the time this first wave of immigration had run its course, there were an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Albanians in the United States. The first generation of Albanian immigrants was composed largely of Orthodox Christian and Muslim males. Most had emigrated for economic reasons or to escape military service, and many planned to return home after accumulating sufficient funds to improve their lives. These early arrivals were mainly of peasant origin or from families engaged in retail trade. They had only limited education and few skills; thus, they were employed as factory, restaurant, or construction workers.
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ALBANIAN AMERICANS Although the Albanian American community is relatively small in size and recent in origin, it has at various times during the 20th century played a significant role in the history of Albania. Most recently, reflecting
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Albanian Americans
By the time Albania proclaimed its independence from the Ottoman Empire in November 1912, the Albanian American community had emerged as the preeminent center of the Albanian national movement and would assume a crucial role in the preservation of Albania’s independence and territorial integrity when the country fell under foreign occupation during World War I. The growth in the influence and prestige of Albanian Americans during the first decade of the 20th century owes much to the leadership provided by Fan S. Noli (1882–1965) and Faik Konitza (1876–1942). Today, both of these men are regarded as icons of the Albanian American community. In 1908, Noli was among the founders of the Albanian Orthodox Church in the United States and served, with several interruptions, as its spiritual leader until his death in 1965. In 1909, Noli and Konitza were the prime movers in the establishment of Dielli (The Sun), the oldest continuously published Albanian language newspaper in the world. Three years later, Noli and Konitza joined with others to form the Pan-Albanian Federation of America (Vatra). Because Vatra supplanted virtually all existing Albanian American patriotic societies, it was viewed as the authoritative voice of the community both in the United States and abroad. Noli and Konitza, both of whom received degrees from Harvard University in 1912, are also revered for their contributions to Albanian culture. The chaos that engulfed Albania during World War I provided Albanian Americans with a unique opportunity to participate in shaping their homeland’s destiny at a critical point in its history. Under the leadership of Vatra, Albanian Americans between 1917 and 1920 raised nearly $200,000 to underwrite, in both Europe and the United States, lobbying and propaganda efforts that were instrumental in preserving Albania’s independence following the war. In addition, they contributed $223,000 in 1920 to help balance the budget of the restored Albanian government. Between 1919 and 1922, the Albanian American community also worked to secure the diplomatic recognition of Albania by the United States—a goal achieved in July 1922. As a reward for their valued services to Albania, Albanian Americans in 1921 were granted the right to elect one member of the Albanian parliament. Noli was chosen to fill this seat, and in June 1924 he served as prime minister of a short-lived progressive government. The overthrow of the Noli government in December 1924 marked the end of the active participation of the
Albanian American community in the political life of the homeland. At this time, the Albanian American community experienced some significant changes. During the 1920s, an estimated 10,000 Albanians returned to the homeland to establish small businesses or to acquire farmland. Others went back to marry or to bring their families to the United States. In the United States, the character of the Albanian American community experienced change as the original settlers began to marry and raise families. Owing to a shortage of Albanian women, however, there were a considerable number of mixed marriages, especially among Muslim Albanian males. For most Albanian Americans, family and personal concerns now overshadowed their interest in political issues in Albania. The adverse impact of the Great Depression also diverted attention away from external political concerns. Albanian Americans, however, continued to manifest their national identity and pride through membership in Vatra and the Albanian Orthodox Church in the United States, as well as through participation in community social and cultural organizations. The invasion and annexation of Albania by Italy in April 1939 served to revitalize the Albanian American community under the leadership of Vatra and, subsequently, the Free Albania Organization, which was established in 1941. Both organizations sought to ensure that Albania’s independence and territorial integrity would be restored after World War II. During the war, Albanian Americans established the Albanian Relief Fund to provide food, clothing, and medical supplies for their compatriots. Albanian Americans, however, were divided in their opinions regarding the postwar Albanian communist regime, with Vatra opposing the new government and the Free Albania Organization supporting it. The end of World War II marked another major watershed in the history of the Albania American community—the beginning of a second wave of immigration from Albania that would continue into the 1960s. This cohort consisted mainly of political refugees associated with the anti-communist resistance organizations and those fleeing Albania following the establishment of the oppressive communist regime. It was more diverse in its composition, encompassing Albanians from all regions of the country and from each of the country’s three religions: Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism. This group was better educated than its predecessor, with high school and university graduates well represented.
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Most Albanian Americans initially viewed them with suspicion or hostility owing to their political activism, but by the 1970s they had been largely integrated into the community. The immediate post–World War II period saw further changes within the Albanian American community. Because many Albanian Americans had prospered during the war, they began to move from the urban neighborhoods of cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Detroit, where they had been clustered, to the suburbs. An increasing number of young Albanian Americans (mostly males but including some females) were enrolling in colleges and universities and embarking on careers in business and the professions. These educated younger generation Albanian Americans, along with those who had served in the U.S. armed forces, tended to marry nonAlbanians and move to diverse regions of the country. Thus, the Albanian American community was losing its cohesiveness during the 1960s when a new and large wave of Albanians began arriving in the United States. This group consisted of ethnic Albanians from Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, and other regions of the former Yugoslav Federal Republic. The new arrivals were mainly Roman Catholic or Muslim, and they were the first significant cohort of Albanian immigrants who had not lived within the boundaries of Albania. They were mostly political and economic refugees who had migrated to the United States to escape the oppression and discrimination to which they had been subjected in Yugoslavia. Although the new arrivals settled throughout the United States, they were concentrated most heavily in New York, Michigan, and Illinois and have become the dominant Albanian element in these states. In a relatively short time, many became successful in pursuits such as real estate, food and lodging services, and construction in addition to medicine and the law. During the 1990s, this group gave generously of its time and wealth to secure the independence of Kosovo and was instrumental in the establishment of the “Albanian lobby” to achieve this goal. This development marked the beginning of the community’s organized involvement in U.S. politics and ensured that its views on issues of concern to Albanian Americans would be effectively presented in the nation’s capital. With the outbreak of hostilities between the Albanians of Kosovo and Serbia in 1999, Albanian Americans raised several million dollars to equip the pro-independence Kosovo Liberation Army, and a contingent of Albanian Americans formed the
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“Atlantic Brigade” and served in Kosovo during the conflict. The demise of the Albanian communist regime in 1991 sparked the most recent wave of Albanian immigration to the United States. This group included mainly political asylum seekers, recipients of “green cards,” U.S. citizens and their families who had been unable to return to the United States in 1939, and Albanian visitors to the United States who failed to return home. These most recent immigrants encompass a broad range of ages and socioeconomic categories, and their ties with the Albanian American community vary widely. According to U.S. Census data, in 2000 there were approximately 116,000 persons of Albanian ancestry residing in the United States. This compares to 2007 estimates of 3.2 million people in Albania. Albanian American community leaders, however, believe that there are likely two to three times that number because many Albanians have emigrated to the United States from countries other than Albania and there has been a high percentage of mixed marriages in the community since the 1950s. Approximately 90% of Albanian Americans reside in states east of the Mississippi River, with their greatest concentrations being in New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Nicholas C. Pano See also Assimilation; Balkans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Muslim Americans; Roman Catholics; Turkish Americans Further Readings
“Albanians.” 1980. Pp. 223–228 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Federal Writers Project. 1939. The Albanian Struggle in the Old World and New. Boston, MA: The Writer. Jurgens, Jane. 1995. “Albanian Americans.” Pp. 43–54 in Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Rudolph J. Vecoli, Judy Galens, Anna J. Sheets, and Robyn V. Young. Detroit, MI: Gale Group. Nagi, Dennis L. 1989. The Albanian America Odyssey. New York: AMS Press.
ALEUTS The arrival of the Aleuts was an important event in the earliest migrations of nomadic hunters to the North
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American continent. They have been the subject of much study. To what ethnicity group are they more related? When, where, and how did they arrive at the Aleutian Chain. Various theories have been developed in response to these questions. The treeless volcanic Aleutian Archipelagos span more than 1,000 miles from the mainland of Alaska and southwestward toward Russia, the average annual temperature is 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and winds are nearly constant at 10 to 20 miles per hour. This climate molded a unique people who were able to survive using limited resources. The Aleutian Islands and weather today are fairly similar to conditions found by Russian explorers in 1741, but the Aleuts have undergone manifold changes to their habitat, religion, clothing, and general growth as a people since then, as described in this entry.
Mysteries of Migration The “Aleut problem,” as brought forth by Roza G. Liapunova, for years has perplexed anthropologists. The Aleuts claim that they traveled along the islands coming from Kamchatka Island in Russia, making settlements, and ceasing their eastward migration on confrontations with another people (perhaps in the Tlingit territory). Yet excavations on ancient Aleutian campsites reveal that the older camps started in the east, with increasingly newer campsites westward.
It is generally agreed that the Aleuts stemmed from the Eskimo/Yupik family, yet on closer examination of the ancient Aleut skulls, they seem to resemble those of the Tlingits to the east, the Evenk of Cisbaikalia on the Asian Continent, and even Sioux Native Americans. Another point of ponder is the two periods of prehistoric Aleut art, with the earlier period being more complex and bearing a definite “Dorset culture” influence on harpoons and spears. Scholars speculate that the Aleuts arrived in Alaska approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Although they may have still been part of the Eskimo/Yupik family when entering the North American Continent, there is also the possibility that the separation took place prior to migrating through the Beringia. Approximately 6,000 years ago, the Aleuts became their own race, as contended by Dennis H. O’Rourke and colleagues, their claims grounded in their research on mitochondria DNA. Finally, approximately 8,000 years ago, the Aleuts made their home on the Aleutian Chain. With one campsite more than 8,000 years old and another approximately 4,000 years old, the community of Nikolski on the Island of Ananiuliak may very well be the oldest community in the world.
Aleut Prehistoric Lifestyle The isolation on these foggy, rainy, and tundra islands honed the talents of the Aleuts not only to survive but also to flourish. They excelled in boat crafting; their kayaks were fashioned from driftwood and mammal skin, with bone and stone joints, making them not only flexible but also the most unique of water vessels. The Aleuts were adept at not only navigating the rarely calm ocean waves but also hunting and fishing within these vessels. The Aleut weaving skills are highly praised, with their grass-woven baskets (both ancient and contemporary) being sought after by museums and private collectors. These maritime people were of a hierarchical society with a chief within each house as well as a main island chief, nobles, common people, and slaves (for those who could afford them). Within the marriage structure, both polyandry and polygamy could be found. There were winter camps with subterranean houses. From spring to fall, the Aleuts made constant trips to various island camps for hunting/fishing and gathering activities that created their subsistence economy. Parkas were made from sewn bird skins. The winter months found the Aleuts back at their winter
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camp, where there was time for artistic weaving activities as well as gear making for the upcoming year. This was also a time for various potlatch-type festivities.
The Great Russian Fur Rush The interpersonal relations of the Europeans and Aleuts started in 1741 when kayaks approached the Russian ship, the St. Paul. Early reports state that the Aleuts gave the Russians artifacts with bird motifs, but it is surmised that these maritime hunters thought that the Russians were spirits. During the second Russian voyage in 1743, the Unangan people (residents of the Atka region call themselves Unangas) were given the name Aleuts; the southern Inuits/Yupiks were also called Aleuts, and their interpretation of this name is Alutiiqs. The evidence of the abundance of fur on the archipelagos of Alaska brought merchant ships and fur traders, with Russian settlements starting in 1784. When the flood of newcomers entered the Aleutian Island territories, increasing negative interactions began to take place. In one village, after witnessing the treatment of their fellow peoples by the Russians on other islands, the women and children committed mass suicide by jumping off a cliff to avoid similar atrocities. During the years 1763 and 1764, four sailing vessels were destroyed by the Indigenous Peoples of the islands, and this brought retaliations by the Russians, with entire villages being destroyed. Due to increasing difficulty in importing and keeping laborers, the Russians started training Creoles (part native and part Russian) and later full-blooded Aleuts. This resulted in the Aleuts beginning to learn trades and even becoming priests.
The U.S. Government Takes Over In 1786, Gerassim Pribilof was sent by the Russian Fur Company to search for two seal breeding islands that the Aleuts spoke of as being a great distance from them. During 1787 and 1788, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George were named. The Aleuts experienced a serf-type relationship, with the Russians as the landowners. When the Americans assumed the lands of Alaska in 1867, the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands became subjects of the U.S. government. The Pribilof Islands received new houses to replace the ramshackle ones and also received medical attention due to the government’s control of the seal business.
Aleutian child, 1938. During the first half of the 20th century, the population of the Aleutian Islands was sparse, consisting mainly of Aleuts and a few Russians and Russian Aleuts. The arrival and settlement of nomadic hunters to the Aleutian islands was an important event in the earliest migrations to the North American continent, although the exact path and origin of the Aleuts remain in dispute among scholars. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USW33-029784-C.
To keep costs down, during part of the year, the Pribilof inhabitants worked without pay, being recompensed with food (which at times could be regulated by the productiveness of the people). When they were paid, it was “near-starvation wages,” as reported by Dorothy K. Jones (e.g., a mid-1940s salary was $700 per year for an adult or $20 for a teenager). In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln declared that slaves in the U.S. South be set free, yet until the early 1960s government agents enjoyed a sovereign power concerning the Pribilof Aleut workers and their families. They were told what they could or could not buy and whether or not they could leave the island or have their relatives come to visit from outside of the island. In 1942 came the World War II Japanese invasion of Attu Island on the Aleutian Chain of Alaska, resulting in 42 villagers becoming prisoners of war in Japan. In addition, the U.S. government evacuated 881 Aleuts to “duration camps” in the panhandle of southeast Alaska. Both resettlements resulted in poor living conditions, sickness, and even death. Many of the Aleuts in duration camps went to work outside of
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the camps. Anatoly Lekanof recalled that for most of the children, it was an exciting time of exploration because this was the first time they were off the Aleutian Islands. During this time, word of the unfair treatment of the Aleuts was disseminated. In addition, the Aleuts became more politically oriented and started fighting for their rights. Organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians and the Alaska Native Brotherhood campaigned for the reform of conditions of the Native Pribilof inhabitants.
Contemporary Aleut Americans Life for the Aleuts is drastically different today from what it was in its earlier history. Subsistence foods and activities have continued to be a part of the Aleut life; however, the gathering and hunting/fishing times (as well as the right to engage in these activities) are now regulated by international, federal, and state laws. This has resulted in various degrees of subsistence activities for both rural and urban Natives supplementing purchased food. The mode of acquiring subsistence food is now implemented with rifles, aluminum boats and outboards, and other purchased gear. After more than 200 years, the Russian Orthodox Church has become a very integral part of the Aleut identity. Manufactured clothing has all but replaced traditional Aleut attire with the exception of traditional affairs. With the Unangan people, as with the other indigenous cultures in Alaska, alcohol, drugs, and mental disorders are leaving their mark on many who are still dealing with the history of trauma against their people—from cultural genocide attempts, massive epidemics that nearly wiped out entire villages, slavery, intense prejudice, and drastic social and economic changes. “Cultural competence,” according to the Center for Mental Health Services, is “the respect … of cultural groups, their histories, traditions, beliefs, and value systems” and is gaining popularity concerning the healing process of traumatized people. Progressive activities are being facilitated to help heal and build community, including those from the Eastern Aleutian Tribes Behavioral Health Clinic, where elders and youth are getting together and making a difference in each other’s lives. The Aleuts, once isolated, are now connected to the world through education, radio, television, and the Internet. They are rediscovering their culture, language,
and history by using everything from culture camps to Internet Web sites. On the Internet, a contemporary Aleut can find the Unangam Tunuu language and download the Tanuu font. Aleut artists’ Web sites show woven baskets, carvings, and other Native artifacts, whereas other Web sites offer Aleut recipes such as fermented fur seal flipper. The Aleuts are an integrated modern people and are proud of their Unangan/Unangas ancestry. Pamela Rae Huteson See Appendix A See also Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning; Colonialism; Emancipation Proclamation; Native Americans; Russia
Further Readings
Jones, Dorothy Knee. 1980. Pribilof Aleuts under U.S. Rule. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Langdon, Steve J., ed. 1983. Proceedings of the Alaskan Marine Archeology Workshop. Sitka: University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska Sea Grant College Program. Lekanof, Anatoly. Aleut Internment [audio recording]. Available from http://www.alaskool.org Liapunova, Roza G. 1996. Essays on the Ethnography of the Aleuts (at the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century), translated by J. Shelest. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Naske, Claus-M. and Herman E. Slotnick. 1987. Alaska; A History of the 49th State. 2nd ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. O’Rourke, Dennis H., M. Geoffrey Hayes, and Shawn W. Carlyle. 2000. “Ancient DNA Studies in Physical Anthropology.” Pp. 217–242 in Annual Review of Anthropology. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. U.S. Congress. 1889. House Subcommittee on the Study of Seal Fisheries of Alaska. House Report No. 3883, 50th Congress, 2nd session, p. 153. Worl, Rosita. 1982. A Synopsis of Alaska Native Subsistence Economies and Projection of Research Needs [subsistence database, Phase II]. Anchorage: University of Alaska, Arctic Environmental Information and Data Center.
ALIEN LAND ACTS The collective term Alien Land Acts refers to individual state laws passed during the early 20th century that limited the ability of aliens who were ineligible for citizenship to own land or, in many cases, to participate in
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long-term leases. Through court rulings and immigration statutes, citizenship was generally restricted to Whites during this period, and anti-Asian resentment was strong in the U.S. West. The laws were implicitly anti-Asian and specifically affected Japanese Americans who owned agricultural land. Revisions strengthening the laws continued throughout World War II until the Alien Land Acts became nonenforceable as a result of a federal court decision after the war. Although the Alien Land Acts were in effect for only three to four decades, they have had a lasting impact on Asians’ abilities both to earn wealth and to gain acceptance in U.S. society, as outlined in this entry.
Historical Context The Alien Land Acts emerged at a time in U.S. history when questions over citizenship, property ownership, and slots in the labor market were being hotly contested along racial and national lines. This was the era of manifest destiny when Europeans and European Americans were migrating to what is now the U.S. West with the sense that it was the United States’s destiny to own these territories. It was a time not only of rapid U.S. land acquisition but also of a racialized vision of U.S. civilization that was designed for the benefit of European descendants. Native Americans and Mexicans were already living on the land that would become the western and southwestern United States, and slavery of African Americans had contributed to the creation of European wealth in the United States. Nevertheless, these groups were excluded from the class of “true Americans” and from the entitlements that followed. One manifestation of this way of thinking was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which preserved the right of naturalized citizenship for “free White persons” only. Although it was created to settle questions of property ownership and citizenship rights in the context of slavery, this act formed the basis for later immigration laws such as the Immigration Act of 1924. This law was created to settle emerging immigration debates by developing a national origins quota system that disproportionately favored Whites; the same act enforced the exclusion of persons ineligible for citizenship. Although the wording of the law was held to be nondiscriminatory because it did not specifically target Asians for exclusion, the impact of the law had this specifically racial implication. Public support for such immigration laws was strong, and in the U.S. West this support took place in
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an environment of strong anti-Asian sentiment. In 1882, the United States passed the only law in its history targeting one particular nationality—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. At the time, the Chinese were widely viewed as a degenerate uncivilized population. They were the targets of mass resentment among European descendants in the western states due to the visibility of Chinese laborers in the rail and mining industries. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act effectively barred immigration from China until 1965, it had the result of increasing immigration from other Asian nations, particularly Japan. Although popular support for a similar Japanese exclusion act was strong, U.S.–Japan diplomatic relations and the development of Japan as an imperial world power meant that such an act never passed. Nativists then turned to the old formula restricting citizenship and its benefits to “free White persons,” supporting laws that barred aliens who were ineligible for citizenship from owning or leasing land—the Alien Land Acts. California was the first state to pass an Alien Land Act in 1913. Within a decade, similar laws were passed in Arizona, Washington, Louisiana, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon.
The Asian Response The creation of the Alien Land Acts spurred varying responses among Asians in these states. Some Asians found ways to circumvent the laws, making use of legal loopholes, the lack of enforcement in some areas, and public indifference to Asian land ownership in regions where land was more readily available and so less contested. A significant legal loophole stated that deeds could be transferred to children of aliens, who by being born in the United States were entitled to citizenship. Many states responded to this practice by tightening control over deed transfers and attempting to regulate who could live on and make use of the land. Another response to the Alien Land Acts was a series of court cases seeking to classify Asians as Whites. Although this move sounds surprising, given the entrenchment of racial categories of White and Asian in the United States today, during the 1920s these boundaries were far from clear. Dozens of these cases were being considered at the time, and two made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1922 case of Takao Ozawa v. U.S., Takao Ozawa argued that he should be entitled to U.S. citizenship on the basis of his moral character, his support of U.S.
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ideals, and his assimilation into U.S. society. The Supreme Court rejected his claim, arguing that because he was not White under the accepted scientific classification system of the time, he could not become a U.S. citizen. The U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind case one year later made use of the same racial classification system used against Ozawa, attempting to demonstrate that Thind in fact fell into the scientific classification of whiteness. The Supreme Court still held that Thind could not become a citizen; despite these classifications, “the common man” would not consider Asian Indians as White, the court stated, and so Thind could not claim citizenship on these grounds. The impact of these court cases reached far beyond the individuals whose racial and national identities were in question. On the court creation of White and Asian as racial categories, and based on the Alien Land Acts, many Asians who had already been naturalized were stripped of their citizenship and, as a result, of their land rights. In some states, this also meant being stripped of a license to practice various professions. The land that had been legally deeded or leased to Asians prior to the Ozawa and Thind cases was seized by the government and sold to Whites.
Continuing Impact The Alien Land Acts received varying levels of enforcement and attention during the era between the 1920s and World War II, when they took on a special relevance for Japanese Americans. Following the same logic that justified the Alien Land Acts and the resulting ineligibility for citizenship, many Japanese Americans in the western United States, citizens and noncitizens alike, were interned during World War II. During this period, Alien Land Laws were tightened in all states except Washington. Given the short period of time in which Japanese were able to sell their homes and other assets, many possessions were again sold to Whites at far below market value. The Alien Land Acts facilitated this transfer of land, and racist sentiment in the hysteria of the war solidified public support of the Alien Land Acts. The Alien Land Acts were rendered nonenforceable by the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which ended racial requirements for citizenship. However, decades of enforcement have had a lasting effect on the Asian community in the United States. One significant impact is the gap in wealth along racial lines. Although Asians are close to economic parity with Whites in the United States, they still lag behind in
terms of home ownership and other measures of wealth. Much of this inequality has to do with historical realities such as the Alien Land Acts, which have facilitated the growth of White wealth via property ownership. For centuries in the United States, White Americans encountered no racial barriers to property ownership and in many cases benefited from direct transfers of wealth from non-Whites. As a result, White Americans have had a longer time to accumulate and consolidate their wealth. This wealth affects not only their personal holdings but also their access to good education, employment opportunities, and continued investment among generations. Another important legacy of the Alien Land Acts is the continuing idea that Asians cannot be assimilated into U.S. society. Despite time and generations of residence in the United States, this logic continues to argue that Asians are a foreign people and so not fully American. Tied deeply to beliefs in a binary and permanent difference between the East and the West, the Alien Land Acts were just one manifestation of this line of thinking. Further evidence can be seen in the beating death of Vincent Chin after an encounter with unemployed White workers in Detroit, in the jailing of Wen Ho Lee on what turned out to be unfounded accusations of spying activity, and in treatment of Arab Americans and South Asians after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Although the Alien Land Acts have been rendered ineffectual since 1952 and have been cleared entirely from the books of most states, the logic on which they were forged and the implications of their enforcement have had lasting effects for Asians in the United States today. Meghan A. Burke See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Chin, Vincent; Chinese Americans; Chinese Exclusion Act; Immigration, U.S.; Internment Camps; Japanese Americans; McCarran-Walter Act of 1952; Orientalism
Further Readings
“The Alien Land Laws: A Reappraisal.” 1947. Yale Law Journal 56:1017–1036. Lui, Meizhu. 2006. The Color of Wealth: The Story behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide. New York: New Press. Molina, Natalia. 2006. “Inverting Racial Logic: How Public Health Discourse and Standards Racialized the Meanings of Japanese and Mexican in Los Angeles, 1910–1924.”
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Pp. 40–61 in Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States, edited by Nicholas De Genova. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ngai, Mae M. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
AMERICAN APARTHEID The book American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass was coauthored by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton and published in 1993 by Harvard University Press. It was written at the height of the debate on the “urban underclass,” which focused on whether U.S. cities had come to house a large population of poor families detached from labor markets, alienated from social institutions, and prone to crime. During the 1970s and 1980s, poverty became more concentrated within minority neighborhoods and rates of violence accelerated in a
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wave of drug abuse that stemmed from the invention of crack, a cheap but very addictive form of cocaine. Prior to American Apartheid, explanations of urban poverty focused on two competing theories. Conservatives such as Charles Murray blamed the U.S. welfare system. He argued that by providing generous open-ended benefits to poor mothers, welfare discouraged marriage, promoted unwed childbearing, and discouraged work. Liberals such as William Julius Wilson argued that the transformation of the urban economy created the underclass. By replacing highpaying jobs in manufacturing with a two-tiered service economy, the transformation created new employment opportunities for middle-class minorities but reduced them for poor and working-class men, lowering the number of “marriageable males” and fomenting unwed childbearing, welfare use, and a growing concentration of poverty. Neither explanation took account of the fact that, despite the passage of civil rights legislation during the 1960s, the United States remained highly segregated on the basis of race. In American Apartheid,
Public housing in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. The neighborhood name is an extension of the name of the Village of Bedford, expanded to include the area of Stuyvesant Heights. The Bedford community contained one of the oldest free African American communities in the United States. Many people consider the area to be the focus of African American life in Brooklyn, similar to what Harlem is to Manhattan. Throughout the urban United States, one ethnic or racial group typically dominates a neighborhood as described here, and this pattern has been largely unchanged for decades. Source: iStockphoto.
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American Aparth heid d
Massey and Denton drew on a decade’s worth of research to document the continued reality of racial segregation in U.S. cities and to demonstrate its negative effects on groups such as African Americans and Caribbean-origin Hispanics. To conduct their study, they assembled detailed data on the racial/ethnic composition of neighborhoods in the nation’s fifty largest metropolitan areas plus ten other areas with large Hispanic concentrations. They also developed a new measurement model that assessed segregation simultaneously across five geographic dimensions and carefully surveyed prior research to document the social construction of the ghetto historically. Their analysis showed that Blacks and Whites were not always highly segregated from one another in U.S. cities and that before 1870 racial segregation was no more severe than that between Germans, Irish, Poles, Italians, and native Whites. During the late 19th century, however, urban Black populations began to grow through rural–urban migration. As the number of Blacks in cities rose, higher levels of segregation were deliberately imposed on them by Whites using a variety of formal and informal mechanisms that shifted over time. The legal designation of White and Black neighborhoods through legislation gave way after 1917 to a period when segregation was enforced through racial violence, which during the 1920s gave way to new forms of institutionalized discrimination based on deed restrictions, covenants, and prohibitions on renting or selling to “unwanted population groups.” During the 1950s, the federal government itself became directly involved in promoting segregation through its Federal Housing Administration lending policies, urban renewal programs, and public housing construction subsidies. By 1960, high levels of Black–White segregation were universal in the urban United States, and because the Fair Housing Act of 1968 had been stripped of its enforcement mechanisms as part of a compromise arranged to secure its passage, few changes were observed from 1970 through 1990. Black segregation remained at uniquely high levels in the metropolitan United States. Indeed, Massey and Denton identified a subset of metropolitan areas where Blacks were highly segregated on at least four of five dimensions simultaneously—areas the authors labeled “hypersegregated.” Contrary to what Wilson and others believed, middle-class Blacks were not leaving the ghetto in large numbers and Black–White segregation did not decline as socioeconomic status rose.
Massey and Denton argued that a racially segregated society could not be a racially equal society because if African Americans were denied access to housing markets on the basis of race, they were also denied access to critical resources that were correlated with housing, and thus distributed through housing markets, such as education, safety and security, housing wealth, network connections, role models, and insurance costs. They also showed that rising Black poverty (caused by the economic transformations described by Wilson), combined with ongoing racial segregation (caused by continued prejudice and discrimination), produced the remarkable concentration of urban poverty during the 1970s and 1980s. In the absence of racial segregation, the structural transformation of the urban economy would have harmed Black Americans, to be sure, but it would not have had such a disastrous effect on the communities they inhabited to create a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty. In American Apartheid, Massey and Denton sought to move scholarly and popular debate away from arguments about whether it was race or class that produced urban poverty to focus instead on how race and class interacted through housing and job markets to perpetuate disadvantage. They sought to reinforce Wilson’s emphasis on neighborhoods rather than the welfare system as the principal mechanism through which poverty was produced and reproduced in the United States during the late 20th century. Massey and Denton argued that even as economic policies were enacted to promote employment, raise wages, and reduce welfare use, racial policies also needed to be pursued to reduce discrimination in housing and, thus, bring about the desegregation of U.S. society. The specific policies they recommended were actually embraced by President Bill Clinton’s first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, but after the Republican party gained control of the Senate in 1994, these antidiscrimination efforts were cut back and defunded. As a result of this lack of enforcement, Blacks and Whites continue to be more segregated in the United States than in other multiracial societies such as Canada, Britain, and Brazil. The only other case where racial Black–White segregation has persisted at such high levels over such a prolong period is the Union of South Africa under apartheid, underscoring the grounding of the book’s title in reality rather than hyperbole. Douglas S. Massey
Ame ericcan Dile emma, An
See also Blockbusting; Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination, Housing; Housing Audits; School Desegregation; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Segregation Further Readings
Fuchs, Lawrence H. 1994. “American Apartheid” [review]. American Journal of Sociology 99:1342–1343. Massey, Douglas S. 2004. “Segregation and Stratification: A Biosocial Perspective.” Du Bois Review 1(1):7–25. Massey, Douglas S. 2005. “Racial Discrimination in Housing: A Moving Target.” Social Problems 52:148–151. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
AMERICAN DILEMMA, AN Emerging from a grant authorized by the Carnegie Corporation seeking an objective and comprehensive study of the Negro in the United States, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy is a groundbreaking examination of Black–White race relations in the United States. Prior to the publication of An American Dilemma in 1944, the predominant theory of race relations built on the work of Robert Park and the “Chicago School” that viewed race relations as a process of competition and conflict that would ultimately be resolved once the minority group first accommodated and finally assimilated to the majority culture. An American Dilemma challenged the assumptions of the Chicago School by focusing on the responsibility of the majority population (in this case White Americans) in exacerbating racial tensions and placing the solution for racial inequality in their hands. Compiled from exhaustive research beginning in 1939 (and continuing despite the outbreak of World War II), An American Dilemma was published in 1944 and immediately became the inspiration for American liberalism’s approach toward rectifying racial inequity over the next 30 years.
Project Beginnings Credited with instigating the project that would produce An American Dilemma, Newton D. Baker, a Carnegie Corporation board member, suggested that a solution to the “Negro problem” required attention to
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the condition of Blacks in the North as well as in the South, and in October 1935 he proposed that the Carnegie Corporation sponsor a study on the condition of urban Blacks. Rather than selecting from the ranks of U.S. social scientists to direct their study, the Carnegie Corporation board sought a scholar personally unconnected to the nation’s racial history and, therefore, theoretically free from charges of ideological bias in his or her findings. The board selected Gunnar Myrdal, a social economist at the University of Stockholm and a member of the Swedish Senate, as the study’s general director, primarily because Sweden’s history was free from imperialism or colonialism, a fact that would reassure African Americans that the resulting study would be completely impartial. Ironically, Baker and the other board members (many of whom disapproved of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and government-controlled social programs) overlooked Myrdal’s belief in the power of government-legislated social reform, a particularly liberal worldview that would significantly influence the study’s direction as well as its final conclusions.
Research, Methodology, and Findings Myrdal, on accepting the commission, immediately began familiarizing himself with the existing scholarship on U.S. race relations. He visited the U.S. South on a two-month “exploratory journey” to develop his own personal understanding of U.S. race relations. In 1939, he began planning the study, collaborating with dozens of noted U.S. social scientists, including Robert Park, Charles S. Johnson, Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Ralph Bunche, W. E. B. Du Bois, Melville Herskovits, and E. Franklin Frazier. Following these consultations, Myrdal largely rejected the isolated focus on urban and northern African Americans originally envisioned by Baker and instead made an already ambitious project even more so by widening the scope of the study to understand all aspects of African American life in the United States and to document the opinions held by the U.S. populace regarding the proper status and treatment given to African Americans. Understanding the impact that the study’s findings would have on the African American community, leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and the Commission of Interracial Cooperation all gave considerable research assistance to the project, including
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providing unfettered access to their organizations’ archives. Myrdal, seeking the input of a Black social scientist, selected E. Franklin Frazier as the primary reviewer of the in-progress chapters. Frazier, originally skeptical of Myrdal’s ability as a foreigner to decipher the peculiarities of U.S. race relations, generally approved of the submitted chapters and Myrdal’s assessments. Myrdal’s continued leadership of the project fell into doubt following Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940 as Myrdal and his wife, Alva, contemplated returning to Sweden, believing that if Germany invaded Sweden, it would be their civic duty to provide their services to the Swedish government. Myrdal openly considered abandoning the study but was ultimately convinced by close friend and research assistant Richard Sterner (who believed that only Myrdal could do proper justice to the final written report) to remain project director. In Myrdal’s physical absence, Samuel Stouffer, a University of Chicago sociologist, became acting director, but Myrdal continued writing the manuscript for An American Dilemma, traveling between Sweden and the United States before completing the initial draft in September 1942. However, aside from the sheer magnitude of the project’s research, which compiled existing published and unpublished studies, new research on African American communities, an exhaustive analysis of statistical data on all aspects of African American life (including but not restricted to income, employment, education, social life, and political activity), and qualitative interviews (many of which were conducted by Myrdal with individuals who were unaware that he was working on a study of the Negro in the United States), what distinguished An American Dilemma from prior examinations of race in the United States was a unique thesis that focused on the attitudes of White Americans toward African Americans to reveal a conflict between the ideals of the “American creed” largely held by most White Americans and the reality of racial discrimination in the United States. Myrdal began by challenging William Graham Sumner’s construction of “folkways” and “mores,” dismissing them as overly simplistic and static explanations for social interactions, particularly when dealing with industrialized societies. Instead, Myrdal framed the discussion of race relations as a conflict between the “beliefs” of individuals, or how they encountered everyday life, and “valuations,” or the ideals of how life should be. It is this conflict within
White Americans that Myrdal identified as the “American dilemma”—the disjunction between the ideals of the American creed and the treatment of African Americans by White Americans that violated those ideals. It was during his stays in Sweden, while observing the Swedish government’s capitulation to Nazi German demands, that Myrdal began formulating the assessment of the American creed, which he defined largely as a high moral platform built on ideas of equal justice, political freedom, and civic duty. The remaining text of An American Dilemma documents the status of African American life in terms of racialized status, population and migration patterns, economic conditions, employment, political activity, confrontations with the justice system, access to education, religious institutions, and the leadership of the African American community. In each instance, it documents how the most significant obstacle to African American equality has been the failure of the majority White population to live up to the American creed. In the final chapter, “America again at the Crossroads,” Myrdal reiterated the opportunity presented by the impending victory in World War II for the nation to rectify its prior failures. Citing the lost promise of Reconstruction following the end of the Civil War, Myrdal urged a far more active role for social engineering and governmental involvement and a rejection of laissez-faire policies when addressing racial inequality. In addition to the publication of An American Dilemma, the Carnegie Corporation initially scheduled nine monographs arising from the research for individual publication, but ultimately it printed only four: The Myth of the Negro Past (by Melville Herskovits), The Negro’s Share (by Richard Sterner), Patterns of Negro Segregation (by Charles S. Johnson), and Characteristics of the American Negro (edited by Otto Klineberg). Lawrence Hashima See also African Americans; Boas, Franz; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Frazier, E. Franklin; Harlem Renaissance; Johnson, Charles S.; Park, Robert E. Further Readings
Herskovits, Melville J. 1941. The Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper. Johnson, Charles S. 1943. Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper.
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Klineberg, Otto, ed. 1944. Characteristics of the American Negro. New York: Harper. Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper. Sterner, Richard. 1943. The Negro’s Share. New York: Harper.
AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT The American Indian Movement (AIM) emerged from the broader context of ethnic/racial activism during the civil rights era in the United States. AIM was founded in 1968 on the streets of Minneapolis to monitor police harassment and abuse. From this original mandate, AIM quickly evolved into a civil rights organization fighting for Native American rights. This entry reviews its history and contributions.
Early Issues Amid the many local struggles in which AIM members participated across the country, one major protest event drew national and international attention. In 1969, the group “Indians of All Tribes” began its occupation of Alcatraz Island. During the 19-month occupation, a major spokesperson was Dennis Banks, a founder of AIM. That same year, AIM founded an Indian Health Board in Minneapolis, the first urbanbased health care center for American Indians in the nation. After the Alcatraz occupation, AIM chapters were founded across the United States in major cities with significant Native American populations. During this time, some of AIM’s most ardent leaders, such as Russell Means and John Trudell, were recruited to its ranks. Throughout these early years, AIM members expanded their vision for social justice by attacking inequalities on numerous fronts. For example, AIM occupied abandoned property at the naval air station near Minneapolis to focus attention on Indian education. In 1970, a legal rights center was founded to assist in alleviating indigenous legal issues. In a series of demonstrations, AIM members publicly addressed Native American grievances. For example, on July 4, 1971, AIM members held demonstrations atop Mount Rushmore. On Thanksgiving Day, protesters took over a replica of the Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts, painting Plymouth Rock
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red, and they used the ship as a public forum to air Native grievances. In 1971, AIM assisted the Lac Courte Orielles of Ojibwa, Wisconsin, in taking over a dam controlled by Northern States Power that flooded reservation land. The action led to an eventual settlement, returning more than 25,000 acres of Ojibwa land. That same year, the First National AIM Conference was convened to develop long-range strategies for future directions of the movement. Eighteen AIM chapters attended the meeting.
An Agenda of Issues AIM continued to become directly involved in issues nationwide. In February 1972, Means led a caravan of approximately 1,000 people to Gordon, Nebraska, to protest the failure of local authorities to charge two Anglo men in the torture and murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder. AIM also organized a caravan to Washington, D.C. The central objective was to present a twenty-point solution paper to President Richard Nixon to address Native American grievances on the eve of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. In what was called the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” 2,000 people from reservations and urban areas across the country arrived in the capital in November. When government officials refused to allow representatives to deliver their document about treaty rights and self-governance, approximately 400 AIM members and activists seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in the Department of the Interior building. The six-day occupation ended only after the Nixon administration publicly committed itself to addressing each point. The occupiers left the building, but not before taking many confidential files discovered in BIA offices. The documents revealed many questionable government practices, including land and mineral fraud as well as the forced sterilization of Indian women. AIM came to Washington as a civil rights organization, and it left with the reputation for violent action. This reputation was magnified after the media focused on the vandalizing of the BIA offices rather than on the issues of indigenous sovereignty. While AIM members drew national and international attention to Native American issues, they also sought solutions to problems. Realizing that any resolution must be based in a strong cultural and spiritual context, AIM opened several survival schools in Milwaukee and the Twin Cities (Minneapolis– St. Paul) area. However, in 1973, the federal government
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abruptly canceled AIM’s education grants. Many believe that the withdrawal of funding was punishment for the Trail of Broken Treaties, although legal action restored them. Within two years, a Federation of Survival Schools was created among sixteen schools in the United States and Canada. The purpose of the federation was to advocate and cooperate in a culturally based education for American Indian and Native children. That same year (1975), Housing and Urban Development (HUD) chose AIM to be the primary sponsor of the first Indian-run housing project, the Little Earth of United Tribes.
Wounded Knee After the Trail of Broken Treaties, some AIM members headed to South Dakota to protest a pattern of racism and violence against Indians in off-reservation border towns. On February 6, 1973, 200 AIM members and police confronted each other at the county courthouse in Custer. A local Anglo man, Darold Schmitz, stabbed Wesley Bad Heart Bull to death, and Schmitz was charged with manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. When local officials refused the AIM request to alter the charge, violence ensued. In the end, approximately 40 AIM members were charged with offenses. Several AIM members were jailed, including the victim’s mother, but Schmitz never served a day in jail. AIM leadership also was contacted by the Lakota Elders to assist them in solving the pattern of gross corruption within the BIA and the Tribal Council on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The major conflict was between traditional Oglalas and the federally sponsored tribal government under Dick Wilson. Traditional Oglalas requested support from AIM to defend them against what they saw as a state of terror carried out by Wilson’s tribal government. The conflict led to the 71-day armed confrontation at Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. The occupation began February 28, 1973, and the armed standoff, involving U.S. army reserves, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, law enforcement, and armed vigilantes, ended May 7 after officials agreed to investigate the complaints. The incident at Wounded Knee became a powerful social point for Indian sovereignty. After the Wounded Knee incident, the federal government intervened in ways that had a negative effect
on the movement. AIM leadership was neutralized by a series of criminal charges. During the eight months of trials, the longest federal trial in U.S. history, the defense uncovered many instances of government misconduct. Eventually, most charges were dropped against Means, Banks, and others. On the Pine Ridge reservation, Wilson remained in power despite being outpolled by Means in an election. The Department of the Interior upheld the decision to keep Wilson in power. Wilson’s vigilantes then began a violent campaign to rid the reservation of any political opposition. By the spring of 1975, the Oglalas who were targeted by Wilson’s men had come to conclude that armed self-defense was their only means of survival. AIM members were called back to the reservation and established a base camp at the Jumping Bull property. When FBI agents chased a car onto the property, a gun battle ensued. A force of federal agents, Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONS), and BIA police attacked the AIM defensive encampment. Two FBI agents and one AIM member were killed in the firefight. To capture escaping AIM members, the FBI brought a force of 250 militarily equipped men onto the reservation. Over the course of the next year, the hostilities on the reservation subsided. For the killings of the FBI agents, a number of AIM members were placed on trial. All were acquitted except Leonard Peltier, who was extradited from Canada in 1977. Peltier was convicted in the deaths of the FBI agents and given two life sentences. Questions have been raised about the evidence submitted by the prosecution at the original trial, and new evidence demonstrated that Peltier’s gun did not kill the agents. Nevertheless, Peltier remained incarcerated. Many charge that Peltier is a political prisoner, incarcerated more for his activism than for the deaths of the FBI agents.
A Global Perspective As AIM’s activities grew, the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) began an active campaign to undermine and discredit the movement’s goals, using everything from arrests to infiltrator provocateurs. The effort did not succeed in destroying AIM; rather, it had a role in the eventual creation of a unified AIM. In 1974, Means founded the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) to charge that the U.S. government is in violation of an 1868 treaty. Within three
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years, the IITC arranged the first meeting of Indian peoples from North, South, and Central America before the UN Economic and Social Council at the palace of nations in Geneva, Switzerland. That meeting led to the creation of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations charged with conducting investigations into indigenous issues worldwide. The IITC was the first designated indigenous nongovernmental organization. The IITC remained active into the mid-1980s, but internal political disagreements led to a decline in support among many activists. Despite changes in political direction since its existence, IITC members continue to struggle for international indigenous rights. In April 1996, AIM and IITC representatives attended the Preparatory Meeting for the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism hosted by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and held in La Realidad in the Lancondone Rainforest of Eastern Chiapas, Mexico. EZLN also hosted a second meeting, held from July 27 until August 3, 1996, about the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism. Delegates of the IITC and AIM also attended this meeting.
Domestic Issues The Longest Walk was the final unified AIM action. Organized by Banks, the walk began in San Francisco in February 1978. Participants walked across the United States holding a series of public education events to gather local support and participants. By the time they arrived in Washington, D.C., on July 23, the march contained several hundred Native Americans representing more than 80 nations. The participants held a rally on July 25 where a manifesto was delivered amplifying the 1972 twenty-point program. Congressman Ron Dellums had the piece printed as part of the congressional record. On local stages across the country, AIM continued to maintain a high level of involvement in American Indian issues. Members founded MIGIZI Communications, which is dedicated to the production of Indian news and information to educate students of all ages as tomorrow’s technical workforce. This organization launched an adult educational program for American Indian offenders, continued to establish survival schools, and opened the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center (AIOIC), which creates
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job training schools to ameliorate unemployment among Indian people. More than 17,000 Native Americans have been trained for jobs at the center since it opened in 1979. Throughout the 1980s and beyond, AIM continued its efforts to achieve social justice for American Indians. In South Dakota, local AIM chapters played an instrumental role in the 1980 Black Hills International Gathering. A year later, they founded the Yellow Thunder Camp, a four-year occupation of 880 acres in the Black Hills of South Dakota. AIM members became involved in the Hopi–Navajo land issue by organizing a security camp to protect 10,000 traditional Dine from being forcibly removed from their homes. They also assisted the Anishinabe Akeeng Organization in its struggle to regain control of stolen reservation lands. AIM formed the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media to confront the media stereotypes about American Indians. Over the course of its existence, AIM has gone through a number of alterations in purpose and organizational structure. In the beginning, AIM sought to solve local issues, but it quickly evolved into an activist organization to address national and (eventually) international indigenous issues. AIM remains in the forefront with respect to issues of self-determination, sovereignty, and the improvement of American Indian lives. This commitment now extends to supporting indigenous struggles across the globe. Over time, however, AIM has gone from a centralized organization to autonomous AIM chapters scattered across various states and into Canada. This is the result of several factors. As the political economic landscape changed, disagreements arose within AIM’s ranks over tactics and strategies for continuing the struggle. This factor, combined with governmental efforts to undermine AIM, resulted in charges and countercharges of government collaboration, ethnic fraud, and conspiracy among AIM factions. The legacy of AIM’s work has entered into the mainstream of Native North America. On February 27, 1998, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wounded Knee incident, an Oglala Lakota Nation resolution established that day as a National Day of Liberation. On July 16–19, 1998, the 25th annual Lac Courte Oreilles Honor the Earth Homecoming Celebration was held to celebrate and honor the people of Lac Courte Oreilles and AIM who participated in the July 31, 1971, takeover of the Winter Dam and the birth of Honor the Earth. Several days later, at the Pipe Stone
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Americanization
Quarries, Minnesota, the AIM Grand Governing Council convened to commemorate AIM’s 30th anniversary and set the agenda for struggling for American Indian rights and sovereignty. Gregory R. Campbell See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; National Indian Youth Council; Native American Identity, Native Americans; Peltier, Leonard; Red Power; Reservation System; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973), Zapatista Rebellion Further Readings
Churchill, Ward. 1994a. “American Indian Movement.” Pp. 37–38 in Native Americans in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, edited by Mary B. Davis. New York: Garland. Churchill, Ward. 1994b. Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America. Monroe, ME: Common Courage. Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. 2002. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. rev. ed. Boston, MA: South End. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1984. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An American Indian Declaration of Independence. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Johansen, Bruce and Roberto Maestas. 1979. Wasi’shu: The Continuing Indian Wars. New York: Monthly Review. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. 1971. Red Power: The American Indian’s Fight for Freedom. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wittstock, Laura Waterman and Elaine J. Salinas. n.d. A Brief History of the American Indian Movement. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.aimovement.org/ ggc/history.html Web Sites
American Indian Movement, Council on Security and Intelligence: http://www.aimovement.org/csi
AMERICAN INDIANS See NATIVE AMERICANS
AMERICANIZATION Americanization—literally, the process of becoming American—is a cultural phenomenon rather than a legal one, not to be confused with naturalization and
the process of becoming a legal citizen of the United States. It represents a conservative social pressure, exerted on individuals or groups who are (or are perceived to be) culturally marginalized, to become integrated into “mainstream” culture, whatever that might be at any given time. For much of U.S. history, that culture was strongly identified with and determined by Western Europeans and Protestantism, so that prejudice related to race and religion excluded many people from the possibility of being Americanized. In other words, Americanization was the process of becoming more like, or more accepted by, the Protestant dominant culture. As demographics have changed particularly since World War II, with religious diversification and a dramatic change in the role of religion in U.S. society, so too has the meaning of Americanization changed. This entry traces the history of Americanization from the founding of the republic to contemporary times.
Early Years Relative cultural homogeneity during the colonial and early republic period meant that concepts of inclusion into public culture—particularly as enshrined in the law—were generally defined by European males, usually from wealthy families, who were overwhelmingly Protestant. The “blue” and Sunday closing laws, religious restrictions on voting and eligibility for election, prosecutions for blasphemy, and Bible reading in school were common reflections of the synthesis of Protestantism and U.S. public society. Some Catholic men did participate in the larger political culture—for instance, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence—but by the American Revolution even the historically Catholic colony of Maryland was under Protestant political control. Free African Americans, women, Jews, and the working classes were marginalized politically and, thus, rendered incapable of contributing to the larger cultural debates in other than occasional or indirect ways. Enslaved African Americans and Native Americans residing on reservations were specifically excluded by law. This meant that, for the most part, although all of these groups may have been the focus of public debate about the ethics of slavery or the rights of women, for example, they were never mistaken for fully vested members of U.S. society. This is not to suggest that there was universal agreement within the Euro-American Protestant
Americanization
world. Some scholars of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment have suggested that its religious clauses were crafted specifically to protect the new federal government from serious and continuing denominational suspicions that dominated specific colonies as they became states. Given the relative homogeneity of the power elite, religion was the most tangible cultural distinction; a federal guarantee permitting the continuation of state religious establishments while disestablishing the federal government meant that, for example, Massachusetts Congregationalists and Virginia Episcopalians could reach a consensus on the new national charter.
The Impact of Immigration By the 1840s, however, significant changes introduced challenges to the perceived Protestant monopoly on the “U.S.” identity. Roman Catholicism— established on the West Coast nearly a century before British Protestantism settled the East—became the largest single religious identity in the United States when the Methodists split North-and-South over slavery. In addition, increased immigration from Ireland and Germany meant an increased number of Roman Catholics in the United States. By the end of the 19th century, continued Catholic immigration coupled with a relative explosion in Jewish immigration (from Central and Eastern Europe), as well as the beginnings of Eastern Orthodox immigration from the Baltic and Mediterranean states, meant that the religious complexion of the country was changing. In addition to the increased immigration of nonProtestants, U.S. society was experiencing continued diversification from within. The introduction of new denominations and sectarian groups—long a facet of American Protestantism—was exaggerated by splits within denominations over issues such as biblical literalism and modernism, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism. Although there were continued efforts to maintain a united Protestant front (particularly in missionary work and Bible publishing), by the beginning of the 20th century it was increasingly obvious that a Protestant cultural monopoly could no longer be presumed. The challenge was not without resistance. On the one hand, legal impediments continued, and groups such as the American Protestant Association, the Know Nothings, and the Ku Klux Klan—all products of the 19th-century United States—sought to limit the freedoms of non-Protestant Americans, to limit
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immigration from largely non-Protestant countries, and/or to make official the Protestant nature of U.S. society. On the other hand, some of these and other religious groups and individuals used violence to combat what they perceived to be “un-American” groups or activities. The burning of the Charlestown convent in 1834 and the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 are just the more infamous of acts against American Catholics and Jews fueled by nativist impulses. In many respects, the “high water mark” of this religious response came during Prohibition, which can be seen not only as a debate over the place of alcohol in U.S. society but also, because of the various parties involved in the public debate, as a religious battle over U.S. society. This battle was fought between second-generation conservative Protestants, who favored Prohibition, and first-generation (and immigrant) Catholics and Lutherans, who did not. The fact that the former group initially won the debate (in the form of the Eighteenth Amendment ratified in 1919), only to see the tide turn (with the Twenty-First Amendment that repealed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933), suggests as much about the end of the Protestant cultural monopoly in U.S. public society as it does about the place of alcohol therein. The 1928 presidential campaign, which pitted Catholic Al Smith against Quaker Herbert Hoover, elicited reactions in the media and in pulpits around the country associating Smith with alcoholism and a papal conspiracy to take over the country. Within a few years (the 1930s), the debate shifted to the film industry, with Jewish movie moguls and Catholic cultural critics each vying to seem the most “American.”
Since World War II Post–World War II conceptions of Americanization were considerably different. Patterns of military service meant increased exposure across religious and ethnic lines, and the suburbanization of U.S. society marked the great migration of the middle class out of the cities. The rise of Jewish and Catholic media personalities, a nearly ecumenical fight against communism, and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement diverted some attention away from religious differences. “American” meant anti-communist, and although Protestant definitions persisted, as the century progressed into its later decades, religion as a social marker would mean less than it had meant in the past. During the 1960s, a spirit of religious individualism grew, particularly among the “baby boom” generation
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(born between 1946 and 1963), as a result of expanded interaction with non-Western religious traditions because of changes in immigration law, growing generational suspicions toward social institutions (particularly government and religion) because of perceived “establishment” positions on issues such as birth control (and sex generally), the Vietnam War, and (ultimately) the Watergate scandal. This spirit, coupled with legal and social attitude shifts on issues related to individual rights and liberties, meant that by the end of the 20th century, Americanization meant negotiating not with the pressure to be more Protestant-like but rather with the pressure to maintain a conservative, tradition-based, institutional religious identity. At one time, Americanization meant that Reform Jews could announce their divergence from traditional Judaism by introducing mixed-gender seating and liturgical instrumentation or that a number of religious communities could adopt Protestant-sounding names (e.g., Buddhist Churches of America, the Native American Church) or mores (as with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Today’s Americanization reflects a general social and political conservatism correlated to traditional religious observance generally. Exit polls from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections indicate, for example, that the single best predictor of voting behavior was not religious identity but rather religious participation of any kind; those who participated in religion more frequently were more likely to have voted along conservative political lines. As U.S. society reorganizes along individualist versus communitarian lines, Americanization retains communitarian meaning where Protestantism once dominated. Eric Michael Mazur See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Civil Religion; Dillingham Flaw; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration and Race; Jewish Americans; Ku Klux Klan; Lithuanian Americans; Nativism; Religion, Minority; WASP
Further Readings
Handy, Robert T. 1984. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Mazur, Eric Michael. 1999. The Americanization of Religious Minorities: Confronting the Constitutional Order. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Moore, R. Laurence. 1986. Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press. Wuthnow, Robert. 1988. The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is the oldest Jewish defense organization in the United States, established in 1906 to protect the civil and religious rights of Jews around the world. Over the years, its concerns have included immigration policy, antiSemitism, civil rights, international affairs, and Israel. The AJC’s orientation has long been that of a thoughtful and deliberative organization. Indeed, it traditionally viewed itself as being the “think tank” of the Jewish community. In addition to its regular sponsorship of a range of studies and conferences, an influential periodical, Commentary, is produced under the AJC’s auspices with a completely independent editorial policy. Since 1900, the AJC has published the annual American Jewish Year Book, which over the years has become the “document of record” for American Jewry. This entry reviews the organization’s history of advocacy.
The Structure The AJC was formed as a direct outgrowth of concerns about conditions in Czarist Russia, especially the 1905 Kishinev pogrom, and as one response to the search for a basis on which a central representative organization of American Jews could be built. The AJC initially consisted of a small group drawn from the established German Jewish community, people who had migrated in large numbers to the United States beginning in the 1830s. They became well established and viewed their purpose as being able to respond to matters of concern on behalf of American Jews. The organization’s founders represented the prominent German stratum within the Jewish community; out of a sense of noblesse oblige, they combined philanthropic activities and hofjude (“court Jew”) diplomacy on behalf of their fellow Jews. Oligarchic in design, the AJC started as a committee with a limited membership of 60 U.S. citizens
American Jewish Committee
(expanded to 350 by 1931). It had offices in New York and remained a small group for many years. The AJC was self-selected and shared the “elitism” of the German Jewish community, then the regnant Jewish population in the United States. After World War II, the AJC expanded markedly in size and function. A chapter plan adopted in 1944 slowly changed the oligarchic cast and elitist control of the organization. The AJC also reconsidered its historical reluctance to use litigation as a strategy and began to press its case in the courts. In 2005, the AJC had a membership of approximately 150,000 people organized in 33 chapters around the United States. Operating in 2005 on a budget of approximately $37 million—the AJC’s budget in 1979 was $8 million, on par with the AntiDefamation League—the agency maintains offices in Brussels, Berlin, Geneva, and Jerusalem, and has a presence in Paris, Mumbai, and Warsaw, in addition to its New York headquarters.
Ideology and Agenda Two ideas have characterized the work of the AJC throughout its history. First, there was the notion of “stewardship”—the idea that a diaspora-based group of Jewish “stewards” could enhance the collective welfare of the Jewish people. During recent decades, a new notion was added—that no “defense” agency is effective unless it also promotes the internal vitality of the Jewish people. In this second objective, the AJC carved a path that was different from that of its sister defense groups. The AJC’s agenda shifted over the years in response to changing developments. The plight of Russian Jewry before World War I prompted the AJC’s strong defense of a liberal U.S. immigration policy. Following the war, the AJC welcomed the Balfour Declaration articulating British support for a Jewish “national home” in Palestine; however, consistent with its anti-Zionist (at best “nonZionist”) stance, which prevailed until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the committee underscored the provision that the declaration would in no way prejudice the liberties of Jews in other lands. During the 1920s, the AJC centered its attention on refuting the popular “Jew Communist” charge circulated in the infamous “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and further propagated in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent. The AJC’s approach involved discreet lobbying, a nonconfrontational strategy
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reflecting the fear that the group would be perceived as a “Jewish lobby” with interests at odds with those of other Americans. The rise of Nazism led to intensified activities. When efforts to find allies who could halt the Nazis with aroused public opinion failed, the AJC turned increasingly to plans of rescue and emigration for German Jews, an effort halted by the outbreak of war. Simultaneously, the committee fought the alarmingly sharp rise in organized anti-Semitism in the United States with an emphasis on education and “prejudice reduction” programs. The AJC hoped that the future of Jewry would be secured by universal recognition of human rights to be protected by the United Nations, and it lobbied in 1945 at the San Francisco Conference, where the charter for the United Nations was prepared, for an international commitment to that principle. By 1946, the AJC realized that the problem of displaced persons could be solved only by the creation of a Jewish state. Modifying its traditional anti-Zionist stance, it cooperated with Zionist groups in advocating the cause of partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. After 1948, the committee worked consistently to ensure U.S. sympathy for and diplomatic aid to Israel, and by agreement with Israel statesmen it officially kept Israel’s interests distinct from those of diaspora Jewry. A turning point came in 1943 with the appointment of John Slawson as AJC executive. Slawson believed that, consistent with the AJC tradition of viewing rights for Jews as part of the larger struggle for rights for all minorities, the committee needed to be transformed into a vibrant civil right agency. From 1947, AJC actively participated, through litigation, educational campaigns, and community projects, in the struggle of the Blacks for equal rights. Work to break down the barriers in education, housing, employment, and public accommodations led to pioneer efforts against antiJewish discrimination in clubs, fraternities, and the “executive suite.” The AJC’s focus on human relations resulted in new approaches to intergroup cooperation and intercultural education. In that area, it labored successfully for the revision of prejudiced teachings about Jews in Christian textbooks and for the historic declaration on the Jews—Nostra Aetate—approved by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. The AJC has also explored new ways in which to understand intergroup dynamics and to strengthen Jewish identity in the United States. The annual
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Americans with Disabilities Act
Survey of American Jewish Public Opinion, conducted by the Market Facts agency, provides valuable data for social scientists and policymakers. Numerous studies on a range of issues have emerged from the AJC over the past 40 years.
Recent History Three transitional periods mark the recent history of the AJC. In 1944, Slawson’s decision to shape an agency that had a strong network of regional chapters charted a new direction for the agency. This, together with Slawson’s commitment during the late 1940s to a research agenda that resulted in the watershed volume The Authoritarian Personality, created a newly contoured AJC. Second, the events of 1967—especially the SixDay War—suggested to the AJC (as they did to many other agencies) that the committee ought not be on the sidelines during a fateful period of Jewish history. This “mainstreaming” resulted in AJC moving into a contemporary era. Finally, since the early 1980s, the AJC has undergone a necessary process of redefinition of mission and function within the community. During a period of institutional and financial instability, the AJC had four chief executives within a few short years. This process culminated in 1990, with the AJC turning aggressively toward activity in the international arena, in effect positioning itself as an international diplomatic corps for the Jewish people. With the decline of anti-Semitism in the United States and full acceptance of Jews into U.S. society, the AJC’s agenda has expanded beyond matters of “defense” to include questions of Jewish “continuity.” Jerome A. Chanes See Appendix B See also Anti-Defamation League; Anti-Semitism; Jewish Americans; Zionism
Further Readings
Chanes, Jerome A. 1991. “The Voices of the American Jewish Community.” In Survey of Jewish Affairs 1991. London: Institute for Jewish Affairs. Cohen, Naomi W. 1972. Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906–1966. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America.
Ivers, Gregg. 1995. To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Schachner, Nathan. 1948. The Price of Liberty: A History of the American Jewish Committee. New York: American Jewish Committee. Svonkin, Stuart. 1997. Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties. New York: Columbia University Press. Zelin, Richard David. 1992. “Ethnic and Religious Group Politics in the United States: The Case of the American Jewish Committee, 1982–1987.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin.
AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was drafted to ensure equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and self-sufficiency for millions of Americans with disabilities. With this legislation, the federal government recognized that people with disabilities are a discrete minority who have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment and relegated to an inferior position in areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, health services, voting, and recreation. In part, this discrimination follows patterns similar to what has been experienced by racial/ethnic minorities; stigmatized populations whose members also have disabilities face particular social challenges well beyond those dictated by physical or mental limitations. The ADA mandates that (a) employers make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities, (b) public facilities and transportation must be accessible for people with disabilities, and (c) communication barriers must be eliminated for those who are deaf or hard of hearing and blind or visually impaired. The act, which took effect July 26, 1990, is considered to be the most comprehensive policy statement ever made in U.S. law about how the nation should address people with disabilities. It is intended to extend to people with disabilities the same protections against discrimination that are afforded minorities and women under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This entry provides some background on the situation of people with disabilities and how the law was intended to improve their circumstances.
Americans with Disabilities Act
Who Is Disabled? Members of the general public who are able-bodied might not consider that they could become disabled; however, people do not always become disabled at birth. It can happen from accidents, diseases, or aging. Disabilities occur in all races, ethnicities, religions, ages, and social classes. Just as members of racial/ethnic minorities and women are often faced with unequal opportunities, so too are people with disabilities. The disabled community has many diverse components. Just as “Hispanic” or “Asian American” brings together a variety of different social groups under the same label, “being disabled” is a broad term. The link among people with mental, physical, or sensory disabilities is not so much the similarity between their impairments as it is their common social experience of oppression, exclusion, and discrimination. Under the ADA, the definition of disability has three parts. The first part applies to a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits at least one major life activity. Major life activities include walking, hearing, seeing, speaking, learning, and performing manual tasks. The second part covers a person who has a history of impairment. This applies to someone who has had cancer, mental illness, or a heart condition. The third part relates to someone who is regarded as having such impairment. In other words, a person may have scars on his or her face but have no physical or mental limitations and no history of having any impairment. The definition of disability is broad; however, some people have encountered discrimination simply because they have a history of disability or because their appearance leads people to perceive that they have a disability.
The Law and Employment The ADA is designed to prohibit private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms conditions, and privileges of employment. The act is slowly driving social, cultural, and legal changes that have enabled people with disabilities to live independently. However, it is not doing so fast enough, especially in areas such as employment.
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The unemployment rate among people with significant disabilities between the ages of 16 and 64 years remains approximately 70% as of 2007. It is the highest of any group of Americans regardless of qualifications and education. The U.S. Census Bureau states that this has been constant for nearly 20 years. African Americans, Hispanics, and women with disabilities are even more likely to be jobless. According to the 2004 National Organization on Disability/Harris Survey, 35% of working-age U.S. residents with disabilities are employed compared with 78% without disabilities. The survey also found that three times as many people with disabilities live with an annual household income of less than $15,000. They are more likely to need accessible transportation and twice as likely to drop out of high school and go without health care that is essential. People with disabilities are not being hired even though they want to work, have the necessary education, and have training for employment. Many employers are worried about the cost associated when hiring people with disabilities, especially when the businesses are required to provide reasonable accommodations. Reasonable accommodations include making the workplace physically accessible, modifying equipment, restructuring the job, providing interpreters, and adjusting policies. The Job Accommodation Network (JAN), a service of the Office of Disability Employment under the U.S. Department of Labor, has been providing information on job accommodations since 1984. Its research shows that more than half of the accommodations needed by employees and job applicants with disabilities cost nothing. Of those accommodations that do cost, the typical expenditure by employers is approximately $600. Moreover, accommodations are required so long as they would not impose any undue hardship or difficulty for the business. Another reason why the unemployment rate is high among people with disabilities is that they are not given a chance to compete for jobs. They often face stereotyping much like members of racial/ethnic groups. For those who are disabled and members of racial/ethnic minorities, the stigmatization they experience can be socially overwhelming. Even people with disabilities and also members of racial/ethnic minorities who are qualified and educated face discrimination and ultimately unemployment. Hundreds of disability organizations across the United States work with a number of different companies
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helping to recruit individuals for employment. These organizations have developed in ways similar to rights organizations on behalf of racial/ethnic groups. However, disability groups typically do not focus on the needs of racial/ethnic minorities any more than traditional civil rights groups consider the special needs of their members with disabilities.
Progress and Challenges Since its passage, the ADA has promoted significant changes, including ramps, curb cuts, accessible parking spaces, Braille signs, and assistive listening at movie theaters. More people with disabilities are able to visit shopping malls, attend colleges, and use public transportation. People with disabilities have money to spend. The National Organization on Disability maintains that people with disabilities, regardless of their employment status, represent more than $175 billion in collective spending power. People without disabilities are benefiting from many of the requirements under the ADA. For example, many of the architectural changes designed for people with disabilities, such as curb cuts, are being used by children, seniors, parents pushing strollers, delivery workers, and skateboarders. The accessibility guidelines requirements for new and existing buildings have removed barriers that had made it difficult for people to get in and out, and moving around inside is becoming less of an issue. Products are designed for universal application regardless of the abilities of the user. All of these are positive changes. At the start of the 21st century, the ADA has come under attack, especially in terms of who is protected. When the ADA was written, Congress broadened the definition of disability from that in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The reason for this was to avoid a debate over the definition of disability. However, the U.S. Supreme Court had curtailed the definition of disability. ADA claims from people with diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, cancer, or mental illness have been rejected by the Court because, with medication, these people are considered to be too functional to meet the definition of disability. Fairness in the workplace continues to be a significant issue among workers with disabilities and their employers. Employers know more about their workplaces, whereas employees with disabilities know more about their conditions. Workplaces can perform better if both parties sit down and find reasonable
accommodations that will result in positive outcomes. Unfortunately, a number of employers have turned to litigating rather than problem solving with employees with disabilities. The number of Americans with disabilities will continue to grow, especially at a time when the United States is involved in war and severely injured soldiers are returning home. The United States has the responsibility to ensure that disabled persons will receive the fair treatment they deserve as they attempt to return to work and full lives in the community. Karen L. Meyer See also Discrimination; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990; Labeling; Stereotypes Further Readings
Braddock, David and Lynn Bachelder. 1994. The Glass Ceiling and Persons with Disabilities. Washington, DC. Glass Ceiling Commission. Hoyer, Steny. 2004. “The Imperative and the Peril of ADA Restoration.” Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law and Policy, delivered at New York Law School, New York, October 21. Imparato, Andrew J. 2004. “Only God Is Able.” American Association of People with Disabilities, delivered at Fairlington Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, VA, June 27. McKay, Jim. 2005. “Americans with Disabilities Act: A Job not Done (yet).” Pittsburgh Post–Gazette, July 15. Shapiro, Joseph P. 1993. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York: Times Books. Web Sites
National Organization on Disability: http://www.nod.org
AMISH The Amish are one of the United States’s unique and distinctive ethnic groups. They grew rapidly during the 20th century despite rejecting high school, television, public electricity, computers, and car ownership. The Amish not only are surviving but are thriving in contemporary society. A German dialect, sharp cultural boundaries, distinctive dress, and selective use of technology have enabled them to thwart assimilation
Amish
and retain a distinctive ethnic identity. This entry highlights the “Old Order” and “New Order” Amish groups that use horse-and-buggy transportation. These two groups account for approximately 90% of the Amish world. Compared with Old Order groups, New Order churches permit greater use of technology, encourage more personal religious expressions, and have stricter guidelines for their youth.
Amish History There are some two dozen different Amish subgroups, each with its own practices. Some have black top buggies, whereas others sport yellow, gray, or white tops. Even within subgroups, diversity abounds. Some congregations permit power lawn mowers, whereas others do not; some use bicycles, whereas others forbid them. The farmers in one congregation may milk their cows by hand, whereas nearby Amish use automatic milkers. Despite their differences, the Amish share a common history. Amish roots go back to the Anabaptist movement that emerged during the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Beginning in Switzerland in 1525 and spreading to other regions of Europe, the Anabaptists refused to baptize babies, arguing that only adults who had voluntarily chosen to follow Christ should be baptized. They were called Anabaptists (or rebaptizers) because they had already been baptized as infants. Considered heretics, many Anabaptists were burned at the stake, drowned in lakes, or tortured in public spectacles. A 1,200-page book, Martyr’s Mirror: The Bloody Theatre of the Defenseless Christians, recorded stories of their torture and still shapes the Amish world. The harsh persecution confirmed their belief that the church should be separate from the larger society. Separation from the world soon became a key force in forming Amish ethnicity. The Amish emerged in 1693 as a distinctive Anabaptist group in Switzerland and in the Alsace region of present-day France. An Anabaptist leader, Jakob Ammann, sought to renew church life. Among other changes, he called for shunning wayward members of the church so as to maintain its witness and purity. The differences led to a division in 1693, and Ammann’s followers were soon called Amish. Many other Anabaptists eventually took the name Mennonite, derived from a Dutch Anabaptist leader, Menno Simons. The Amish migrated to America in several waves during the mid-1700s and again during the 1800s.
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They formed communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana and eventually spread to other states, often settling near their religious cousins, the Mennonites.
Today’s Community The Amish reside in more than 370 communities in twenty-seven states and the Canadian province of Ontario. The three most populous states are Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. New communities form yearly, while others flounder and die. They are organized into some 1,600 local autonomous church districts that typically consist of twenty-five to thirty families living in a contiguous area. There is no central national ecclesiastical structure. The Amish population doubles roughly every 20 years. Counting adults and children, they number some 200,000. Large families and strong retention rates propel Amish growth. On the average, families have seven children, but it is not unusual to have ten or more. Typically, approximately 85% of their youth join the church, but in some communities more than 95% join. Although the Amish do not seek converts, outsiders may join if they comply with Amish guidelines. The Amish speak a Pennsylvania German dialect. Children also learn English in school. Outsiders who do not speak the dialect are often called “English.” The dialect is a key component of their ethnicity. Amish Beliefss
The key difference between Amish values and mainstream U.S. culture revolves around individualism. Unlike other U.S. residents who cherish individualism, the Amish speak of “giving themselves up” to the church. They emphasize self-surrender, submission, and yielding to the will of God and to the rules of their community. Amish values are translated into guidelines for daily living called the Ordnung, a German word that means rules and order. The Ordnung is a set of oral expectations for daily living. Its details vary by subgroup and local congregation. The Ordnung defines expectations and taboos for conduct ranging from personal dress to the use of technology. All Amish groups expect men and women to wear distinctive clothing. Married men are expected to grow a beard and wear an Amish-style hat and vest. Women wear a head covering and usually a three-piece dress that includes a cape and an apron. The details of color and style vary from group to group. Unlike U.S.
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culture, where dress is a tool of individual adornment, among the Amish it signals submission to the collective order and serves as a public symbol of ethnic identity. The Amish forbid owning automobiles, tapping electricity from public utility lines, using selfpropelled farm machinery, attending high school and college, joining the military, initiating divorce, and owning a television, a radio, or a computer. Members pledge to obey the Ordnung at baptism, typically at 18 to 21 years of age. During Rumspringa, their “running around” time, some unbaptized youth may flirt with the world by buying a car, playing an electric guitar, or hiding a battery-operated CD player in their buggy. However, when they join the church, they come under its authority and promptly discard these symbols of modernity. Church and family are the primary social units of Amish society. Young people move into adulthood early and usually marry by 21 years of age. Endogamy is practiced by all Amish groups. Networks of extended families bond their communities together. The typical person has some two dozen aunts and uncles and more than seventy-five first cousins, many of whom live nearby. Family members help each other during emergencies—fire or flood—and of course at death. The elderly typically live in a Grossdawdy Haus adjacent to the house of one of their children. Making a Liv vin ng
Until recently, most Amish were farmers. Church leaders resisted large-scale mechanized farming because it would erode family involvement. Using horse-drawn equipment helped to resist large corporate-style farming. Most farms were small family operations that involved children and valued hard work. Hundreds of small Amish-owned industries have sprung up during recent years. Most of these are family-oriented businesses with fewer than ten employees. They produce wood products such as household and outdoor furniture, gazebos, small barns, lawn ornaments, doghouses, and mailboxes. Other shops specialize in fabricating metal. These microenterprises are very productive, with the larger ones exceeding $5 million in annual sales. Construction work also provides employment for many Amish men. In some communities, the majority of Amish men work in English-owned factories located in rural areas. Despite their growing involvement in business, the Amish remain a distinctly rural people, living along
country roads and on the margins of small villages. The shift to nonfarm work was the biggest change in Amish society during the 20th century. Usin ng Tech hnolog gy
The Amish are not Luddites who reject technology; they use it selectively. Televisions, radios, and computers are rejected outright, but other technology is used selectively or modified to fit Amish purposes. Amish mechanics also create new machines compatible with their cultural guidelines. Moreover, much state-of-the-art technology—gas grills, shop tools, camping equipment, and some farm equipment—is readily bought from non-Amish vendors. The Amish worry that if technology is left untamed, it will harm their community by disrupting traditions and exposing them to secular values. The Amish try to tame technology, hoping to prevent it from harming family and community life. Their distinctive technological practices, in addition to Pennsylvania German and dress, bolster their sense of ethnic identity. For example, they call pneumatic power “Amish electricity.” Relatiionship p to Governmen nt
One of the tenets of Amish faith is care and concern for fellow members of the church. Because they shun commercial insurance, many Amish communities have an informal aid plan to help members with large hospital bills. Like other U.S. residents, the Amish pay state and federal income taxes, sales and real estate taxes, and public school taxes. In fact, they pay school taxes twice because they also support their own private oneand two-room schools. The U.S. Congress exempted the Amish from the social security system in 1966 because they considered it a form of insurance that would usurp the biblical mandate to care for their own. The Amish are taught to respect and pray for governing authorities. However, when caught in a conflict between their conscience and civic law, they will “obey God rather than man.” The Amish are pacifists and refuse to enter the armed forces. They generally avoid politics, holding office, and political activism. They are, however, permitted to vote. All things considered, the Amish have fared rather well in a political system that respects and protects their freedom of religious expression. The Amish have developed a remarkable society. With little government aid or scientific assistance,
Anti-Defamation League
they provide care and dignity for their members. Apart from occasional arrests for alcohol or drug abuse among their youth, the Amish have avoided many of the blights of modern life. They have virtually no homeless, no unemployed, no one living on government subsidies, few in prison, few divorces, and few cases of domestic abuse. All things considered, they have created a rather humane society without high school education, professional training, or high-tech accessories. Maintaining strong and distinctive ethnic identity has been central to their survival and growth. Donald B. Kraybill See also Dutch Americans; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; German Americans; Hutterites; Mennonites; Schmiedeleut
Further Readings
Hostetler, John A. 1993. Amish Society. 4th ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2001. The Riddle of Amish Culture. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2003. The Amish and the State. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. and Steven M. Nolt. 2004. Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profit. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Nolt, Steven M. 2001. A History of the Amish. rev. ed. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. Nolt, Steven M. and Thomas J. Meyers. 2007. Plain Diversity: Amish Cultures and Identities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schaefer, Richard T. and William Zellner. 2008. “The Old Order Amish.” In Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles. 8th ed. New York: Worth. Scott, Stephen E. 1986. Why Do They Dress that Way? Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), originally called the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, was founded in 1913 in reaction to the crude and overt anti-Semitism of that period, specifically the Leo Frank case. The ADL’s goal, as stated in the charter that established the league, is “to end the defamation of the Jewish people . . . to secure justice and fair
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treatment for all citizens alike.” This entry reviews its history of advocacy.
Staff and Strategy Originally based in Chicago, the offices of the ADL today are in New York City. The league works out of thirty-one regional offices located throughout the United States. The ADL also has a cooperative relationship with the B’nai B’rith Canadian office, an office in Jerusalem, and representation in Rome and Moscow. Unlike the American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, and other community relations “defense” organizations in the American Jewish community, the ADL is not a membership organization. It has evolved from being a commission of its parent body to an organization with independent board and fund-raising structures and in reality is fully autonomous. The ADL is staffed by career professionals who are specialists in various disciplines related to community relations—law, communication, education, interfaith affairs, labor, foreign affairs (especially Israel and the Middle East), and social sciences. Although the ADL views itself as an agency devoted to the combating of anti-Semitism and related forms of prejudice, it avers that the threats to Jewish security come from a weakening of the constitutional structures in U.S. society—such as church–state separation—and from a diminution of civil rights and civil liberties. Moreover, the ADL suggests that antiSemitism appears in new forms and guises such as anti-Israel activity and radicalism of the right and left. The league views itself as being an “active” organization, responding in a timely manner to what are perceived to be threats to the rights and security of Jews. It sees itself as taking a pragmatic, rather than an ideological, approach to issues. The ADL, by virtue of its budget and its varied activity, is considered to be a significant voice among the community relations agencies.
Evolving Agenda The ADL’s initial efforts focused on the blatant antiSemitism of the pre– and post–World War I period that included restricted neighborhoods, resorts, and jobs as well as schools that rejected Jews; for example, model legislation drafted by the ADL helped to unmask the Ku Klux Klan and drastically diminish its
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power. However, the ADL’s focus during its early decades was not on taking legal remedies against discrimination but rather on countering defamation of Jews. For example, the ADL exposed the vicious antiSemitism of the Dearborn Independent, which printed and circularized the infamous Protocols of Zion, and extracted an apology and a retraction from its publisher, Henry Ford. Throughout the 1930s, the league fought and exposed the many hate groups that sprang up during the Depression and the Hitler period such as the Christian Front, the Silver Shirts, and the German American Bund. Particularly during the post–World War II period, the ADL was successful in advocating on behalf of legislation against such discrimination. It also dealt with vulgar stereotypes and caricatures of Jews on the stage and in communication media and with incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism, and it played a role in strengthening interfaith and interracial relationships. During the 1960s, the ADL played a role in the successful coalitional effort that resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and of subsequent fair housing and voting rights laws. The ADL’s sponsorship of a comprehensive study of the roots of prejudice—the “Berkeley Studies,” the University of California’s seven-volume Five-Year Study of AntiSemitism in the United States—helped to create a new climate of interreligious understanding and ecumenism and was a factor in the deliberations of Vatican II, which led to the watershed document Nostra Aetate that, in repudiating anti-Semitism, redefined the Catholic Church’s attitude toward Jews. On the international scene, advocacy on behalf of the State of Israel and other involvement in Middle East issues became an ADL priority, especially after 1967. The league carries out an education and action program to help mold public opinion and exposes and counteracts Arab propaganda. The ADL led the effort that resulted in the passage of antiboycott legislation and worked within the European Economic Community to counter the boycott. The league is also active in protecting and securing the rights of Jews wherever they are in danger and played an important role in the Soviet Jewry movement. Interreligious activities also have been an important part of the ADL agenda. During the 1970s, in response to what the ADL then characterized as “the new anti-Semitism” that derived less from overt expression and more from apathy and insensitivity to Jews and to Jewish concerns and problems (including Israel), the league recontoured its
approaches to anti-Semitism. A major prejudice reduction program, “A World of Difference,” has been an ADL centerpiece since the early 1990s, as has been Holocaust education. Convinced that preferential treatment will destroy equality of opportunity and selection based on merit, the league’s position on affirmative action is nuanced in terms of its opposition to the reemergence of quotas.
Changing Ideology The ADL’s traditional ideology was that aggressive use of litigation and other legal remedies to counter discrimination and church–state violations was too confrontational and would ultimately damage the constructive relationships that Jews had built up with other faith communities over the years. From its earliest years the ADL, unlike its sister “defense” agencies, rejected advocating on behalf of antidiscrimination legislation and instead focused on combating prejudice and defamation. The league’s national director until 1947, Richard E. Gustadt, articulated the view that intergroup negotiation and education programs emphasizing cultural pluralism offered the best chances to remedy societal abuses. Certain societal evils could not, in the ADL’s view, be eliminated; they could only be tempered. This view (shared in large measure by the American Jewish Committee) marked a fundamental ideological difference with the American Jewish Congress, which believed in direct legal action. From the late 1940s until the late 1970s, the ADL was led by a tandem of Benjamin Epstein and Arnold Forster, who together began aggressively prosecuting a civil rights agenda for the league. However, beginning in the early 1980s, with a marked shift in the national public policy agenda back to church–state and other First Amendment matters, there was again a shift in the priorities of the ADL. During the tenure of national director Nathan Perlmutter, additional legal expertise and resources were added to the agency’s staff and the league became an aggressive player in the church–state arena. During this period, there was a certain degree of deemphasis of the traditional civil rights agenda resulting in large measure from antiSemitism within some Black civil rights groups. Even with a new emphasis placed on church–state separation and other legal matters, the ADL always viewed church–state concerns to be just one of several major civil rights and civil liberties issues on its organizational palette, which includes countering racial
Antiracist Education
supremacist organizations, judicial remedies for “hate crimes,” and discrimination and harassment. Changes within the organization arising out of exogenous factors did not mean that the ADL intended to abandon its charter purpose of public response to anti-Jewish defamation. Since the mid-1980s, under the stewardship of Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL has become one of the most visible national Jewish organizations on the American—and indeed international—scene. Although viewed as increasingly conservative in some areas of activity, the reality is that the ADL has carved a highly nuanced political path, especially on Israel-related issues, threading its way skillfully between agencies such as the rightist Zionist Organization of America and Jewish groups of the left. This “centrist” approach has been evident in a range of domestic public affairs issues as well. Newer areas of activity for the ADL include threats of global anti-Semitism, “hate” activity on the Internet, working with law enforcement agencies, a new generation of church–state situations, and balancing traditional civil liberties concerns with those of national and local security. The ADL has commissioned a series of public opinion surveys, both in the United States and in Europe, that have elicited valuable data on anti-Semitic attitudes and on attitudes toward Israel. In terms of institutional considerations, until the early 1980s the leading “defense” agency, in terms of budget and stature, was the American Jewish Committee; the annual budgets of the two agencies were at approximate parity at roughly $12 million. The ADL budget ($5.5 million in 1971) began increasing during the 1980s at approximately $3 million per year and soon far outstripped the other “defense” agencies, reaching some $30 million by the early 1990s and approximately $60 million by 2005. The league’s staff and programmatic initiatives have increased commensurately. Also important in terms of institutional dynamics is the ADL’s relationship with B’nai B’rith. The ADL began life as a commission of B’nai B’rith, but tensions developed between the two agencies as B’nai B’rith was recontouring itself from being primarily a fraternal and service organization to one that addresses community relations issues. During the mid- to late-1990s, the issue with B’nai B’rith came to a head, with B’nai B’rith—itself finally seeking to reshape its own identity—asserted that its community relations and “defense” agenda would be pursued
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aggressively. The ADL, maintaining that it was B’nai B’rith’s “defense” arm, in effect severed its ties with its erstwhile parent. (The ADL does retain a de jure legal connection with B’nai B’rith.) Jerome A. Chanes See Appendix B See also American Jewish Committee; Anti-Semitism; Hate Crimes; Jewish Americans; Ku Klux Klan
Further Readings
Belth, Nathan C. 1979. A Promise to Keep: A Narrative of the American Encounter with Anti-Semitism. New York: Times Books. Chanes, Jerome A. 1991. “The Voices of the American Jewish Community.” In Survey of Jewish Affairs 1991. London: Institute for Jewish Affairs. Chanes, Jerome A. 2004. “Who Does What: Jewish Advocacy and Jewish ‘Interest.’” Pp. 100–119 in Jews in American Politics, edited by L. Sandy Maisel and Ira N. Forman. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ivers, Gregg. 1995. To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Svonkin, Stuart. 1997. Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties. New York: Columbia University Press.
ANTIRACIST EDUCATION Antiracist education emerged as dissatisfaction with, and is distinct from, multicultural education, which emphasizes cultural awareness as the means to achieve racial harmony. Antiracist educators characterize multicultural education as a deracialized discourse that understands only superficially the processes that create and perpetuate racism. Its appropriation by liberal and conservative discourses blocks its liberatory potential and preserves the privileges of Whites, according to the antiracist group. Conceptions of antiracist education are diffuse, and the term itself is relatively recent. In general, antiracist education is understood as a set of pedagogical, curricular, and organizational strategies that hope to promote racial equality by identifying, and then eliminating, White privilege. Inspired by the principles of Paulo Freire, it employs the language of critique. One of its strengths, it is claimed, is the ability to move beyond prejudice
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and discrimination as a problem to be corrected in individuals so as to examine critically how institutional structures support racist practices economically, politically, and culturally. Some antiracist educators link antiracist education to student-centered and collaborative learning on the grounds that didactic teaching undermines the ability to elicit, discuss, and analyze personal accounts of racism. Most proponents define antiracist education as a political project directed toward specific goals and achieved through collective action. This entry looks at its ideology and practice and offers a critique.
Framework of the Antiracist Education Paradigm Antiracist educators argue that racism continues to be a major problem in the United States and that sociological concepts such as “social dislocations” obviate its significance. The fact that race is socially constructed does not diminish its importance. They claim that race is much more important than social class in explaining inequality. As a causal construct, race underpins all identities, discourses, and institutional structures, they say. It determines how people treat each other, which groups have access to the material rewards of society, and how such access is negotiated. In the view of antiracist educators, failure to acknowledge this fact results in distorted self-understandings and discriminatory behaviors. Rooted in an autonomous culture, race has a logic relatively unconstrained by material factors. In antiracist education, racism is viewed as a pervasive phenomenon that has multiple meanings and manifestations. For example, it is an ideological practice that creates, and then naturalizes, group distinctions based on phenotypic or other variations with the intent to establish relations of superiority and inferiority. Racism is an epistemology that privileges Eurocentric values, beliefs, and practices. It is the normative framework that defines whiteness as the standard by which to evaluate others. Racism is a set of institutionally embedded exclusionary practices that create, and then reproduce, socioeconomic status attainment disparities, including tracking in schools and discrimination in hiring. It is an aversion to critiquing the ideologies that justify existing arrangements such as equality of opportunity and meritocracy. Racism is manifested in opposition to race-targeted programs such as affirmative action. Sometimes it is likened to distorted thinking, impaired consciousnesses, or a cancer on society.
Antiracist education appropriated the postmodern premise that science is a form of hegemony that does not deserve its privileged status. In this view, science imposes restrictions a priori on what constitutes knowledge, is fraught with problems of subjectivity and preferentiality, and should not be privileged as objective, factual, or universal. In extreme interpretations, Western epistemology is seen as representing little more than domination by Eurocentric men. Here antiracist educators claim that “race thinking” (or “whiteness”) shapes what counts as knowledge. Scientific discourse is constructed in such a way that it cannot admit its complicity in the perpetuation of racial advantages and disadvantages. Antiracist educators reject the conception of research as advancement of knowledge for its own sake in favor of one that states research must be judged in terms of its contribution to particular political projects—specifically those that eliminate racism. According to antiracist educators, an understanding of racism is insufficient to guarantee antiracist behavior. To eliminate racism requires that whiteness be deconstructed and that Whites recognize that they have racist tendencies regardless of their attitudes or beliefs toward minorities. In extreme interpretations, minorities cannot be racist because they are not the beneficiaries of society’s rewards and privileges. Whiteness is the cultural marker against which “otherness” is defined. Because those who possess whiteness accrue unearned benefits, whiteness must be made problematic if prevailing inequalities are to be redressed given that the unexamined self is the guise for perpetuating racism. Whites do not perceive themselves as racial beings; therefore, they do not know what it means to be White, antiracist educators believe. Once Whites recognize their advantages, they need to acknowledge that current arrangements favor them. In antiracist education, whiteness has multiple meanings as well. It is (a) a state of being that is constituted by a historical denial of the harm that Whites have inflicted on minorities; (b) a standpoint from which Whites evaluate, and then denigrate, other identities and discourses; (c) a set of cultural practices that is unnamed, that is, regarded as universal, neutral, or normative; (d) both a structural location and a strategy that allows Whites to monopolize material and cultural resources; and (e) a form of capital from which advantages accrue regardless of social standing or place in life. Whiteness is premised on the claim that opportunities in life are largely dependent on race, a claim that Whites fail to recognize or acknowledge.
Antiracist Education
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Whiteness is manifested in defensiveness (as in “I am not a racist”), characterizations of the minority poor as pathological, claims of reverse discrimination, and so-called color blindness. Antiracist educators hold that those who claim to be color-blind deracialize public discourse and treat race as if it did not matter. They believe that their successes in life are due to talent, motivation, and hard work. Color blindness “relieves” Whites from needing to recognize and take responsibility for racial injustice. It enables them to blame minorities for their plight by circulating their alleged deficiencies in public discourse. In this view, Whites who protest that they had no control over the past reproduce a discourse that disclaims responsibility for the present. Appeals to universalistic morals, values, and principles as the foundation for intergroup relations do little more than maintain the status quo. Antiracist educators construct their argument on the grounds that privileging Western epistemology marginalizes other epistemologies, thereby eliminating from contemporary discourse the manifestations of racism that only alternative epistemologies can grasp. In response to critics who note the profound changes in Black life chances that have occurred since the Civil Rights Movement, antiracist educators respond that whiteness retains its value as a consolation prize. Poor Whites, in particular, do not need to consider themselves losers because they are at least White—a phenomenon that antiracist educators link to White supremacist pride.
eliminate racism from the body and soul as Whites share their affective responses, immerse themselves in the trauma of others, hold themselves accountable for the injustices that they have perpetuated, give up claims to authority, and then witness to others. Here, it is claimed, whiteness studies undermine the respectability and goodness of White identities. In the absence of this intent, Whites would continue to reproduce racial hierarchies as they deny whiteness but racialize others. This version of antiracist education embodies the confessional and redemptive modes common in moral reformation movements. The possibility of redemption seems unlikely if all Whites are inherently racist. Nevertheless, redemption is at the same time the only source of salvation. Moral progress depends on acknowledging White privilege and then disowning and undoing the practice of whiteness. At the highest stage of antiracist identity development, Whites ally with minorities in a common struggle that requires witnessing—defined as a shift in the frameworks through which Whites understand the social world. Bearing witness through firsthand testimony interrupts the historical process of denial; it is crucial for the construction of a “nonracist utopia.” As some antiracist educators see it, the answer lies not so much in sociological understanding as in a development leap sparked by a deep call to the soul. Self-described as an ethically grounded pedagogy of coercion, this version offers a vision of community that is regulated by appropriate morals, values, and behaviors.
Education in Practice
Critics Respond
In practice, some antiracist educators are benign. They propose and have implemented curricular changes, continuing education, and racial awareness training. For example, students are encouraged to discuss racist incidents that they witness or experience. Then they are asked to collectively analyze these incidents as the first step to becoming responsible citizens. Other antiracist educators are less benign and preach with a religious fervor. For example, they say that to deny the “demon of White privilege” through color blindness is to evade responsibility and commit a moral error, not just a pedagogical error. Here racism reemerges as an opprobrium that is equated with original sin. On recognition of their original sin, Whites are expected to express embarrassment and regret for being ignorant. Emotional pain and guilt should be expected as part of the reconstructive process that will
In the United States, antiracist education is confined largely to schools of education. Other disciplines appear reluctant to embrace it on the grounds that this pedagogy lacks a substantive body of empirically grounded research. Antiracist education claims to address the political economic and social structural roots of racism. However, the work of William Julius Wilson and the hundreds of research studies on Black socioeconomic status attainment that followed the publication of The Declining Significance of Race in 1978 are not cited in its literature. This problem may be rooted in antiracist education’s implicit acceptance of the postmodern epistemic that empirically based social research distorts or silences other epistemologies. However, accepting alternative epistemologies at face value does not resolve the questions of how this knowledge is created and whether it is credible or valid.
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The antiracist education literature does not discuss the ontological foundation of race as a concept; the elaborate ideological processes that essentialize, and then reproduce, the idea of race; or the elusive nature of racism itself. Empirical inquiry is slighted in favor of rhetorical assertions that do not acknowledge the ambivalences, inconsistencies, and contradictions within White and non-White identities. Reifying whiteness negates the extent to which the White category is multidimensional and contested. Some critics note that the effort to deconstruct whiteness inadvertently reconstructs it as a fixed, permanent, and allencompassing category. If race is declining in significance, then antiracist education is in danger of becoming a movement without a cause—hence the search for racism in feelings, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, institutions, and cultural repertoires. For example, those who oppose the social programs that are intended to redress racial inequities on the basis of principled justifications are impugned to be racist. Even the abstract principles cited to defend their position, such as equality of opportunity and freedom from government coercion, are cast in the same light. By defining racism as a pervasive phenomenon, the proportion of people thought to be racist increases dramatically and no one can ever be sure that he or she is not a racist. Antiracist educators have not resolved the contradiction between claiming the omnipresence of whiteness and acknowledging the ways in which White privilege is complicated by social class and sex interactions. They have not examined the degree to which processes of racialization and categorization are autonomous from processes of social class formation and structuration or how these processes interact. The tendency in antiracist education to ignore the increasing significance of class does not provide either the understanding or the appropriate strategy to mount a successful antiracist campaign. Jack Niemonen See also Color Blindness; Declining Significance of Race, The; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Multicultural Education; Racism; Reverse Discrimination; Whiteness; White Privilege
Further Readings
Blum, Lawrence. 1999. “What Is ‘Racism’ in Antiracist Education?” Teachers College Record 100:860–880.
Eichstedt, Jennifer L. 2001. “Problematic White Identities and a Search for Racial Justice.” Sociological Forum 16:445–470. Lewis, Amanda E. 2004. “‘What Group?’ Studying White and Whiteness in the Era of ‘Color-Blindness.’” Sociological Theory 22:623–646. Mansfield, Earl and John Kehoe. 1994. “A Critical Examination of Anti-Racist Education.” Canadian Journal of Education 19:418–430. Thompson, Audrey. 1997. “For: Anti-Racist Education.” Curriculum Inquiry 27(1):7–44. Troyna, Barry. 1987. “Beyond Multiculturalism: Towards the Enactment of Anti-Racist Education in Policy, Provision, and Pedagogy.” Oxford Review of Education 13:307–320. Wilson, William Julius. 1978. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
ANTI-SEMITISM Anti-Semitism is one of the world’s most powerful and enduring ideologies—and, in the current century, it is more pervasive than ever. Earlier in the postwar era, this would have seemed doubtful given that the Holocaust raised anti-Jewish prejudice and practice to seemingly unsurpassable levels. But anti-Semitic worldviews are now more universal, and more inextricably part of global culture, than they were during the Holocaust itself. Fantasies of Jewish power and evil are found nearly everywhere—from Egypt to Pakistan, Indonesia to Malaysia, Russia to France, Argentina to Canada. Islamic supremacism is sometimes called the key to global anti-Semitism, but in fact anti-Jewish sentiments are also common in realms where Catholicism, Protestantism, and Greek and Russian Orthodoxy hold sway. Even Japan, which has almost no history of direct contact with Jews and no obvious cultural ground for anti-Jewish sentiment, has become a hub of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, with a prolific source of best-selling books alleging Jewish domination over the non-Jewish world. Contemporary events sustain and spread this worldview. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and simmering controversies over the meaning and truth of the Holocaust exert wide influence, keeping Jews in the global limelight. But the roots of anti-Semitism stretch far into the past. Generations of historians and social scientists have sought to explain how this sentiment crystallized and how, over time, it acquired
Anti-Semitism
The Eternal Jew poster. This poster advertises for a propaganda documentary film produced by Joseph Goebbels, mastermind of the German Nazi propaganda machine. The poster, which stirred up anti-Semitic violence, portrays Jews as moneylenders, Bolsheviks, and slave drivers by depicting a Jewish man holding gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other, with the Soviet Union under his arm. Anti-Semitism, whether endorsed by the state or acted out by individuals, has a long history. Source: Getty Images.
its unique features and dimensions. The answer lies in history, which this entry reviews.
Roots of Prejudice Jews acquired a special religio-cultural status in antiquity that, in modernity, mutated into an oddly ideological identity. Like no other people—and certainly no other dispersed minority—the Jews are imagined to rule and ruin the world. They are viewed as plutocrats and radicals, bankers and commissars, the secret “elders” and masters of capitalism and communism. They are indicted as media moguls who traduce public morality and masquerade as sacred genocide victims. Pariahs who are viewed as parasites, Jews are treated as if they were the key to the world’s woes. Rid the world of Jews, anti-Semites say, and you solve the riddle of history and save humanity.
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No other prejudice is so comprehensive, so paranoid— or so popular. Other despised groups have been demonized; for example, the Tutsis were demonized by Hutu chauvinists in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But no other group has ever been demonized on this scale by adversaries all over the globe, who accuse Jews of savior-killing, soul-destroying, world-dominating malignity. And therein lies the central problem with respect to the analysis of anti-Semitism. A prejudice that resembles other prejudices in some respects, anti-Semitism is also an encompassing ideology formulated to explain the misfortunes of a world careening from disaster to disaster. How are we to understand this ideology in all its complexity? Gavin Langmuir offered a useful starting point by distinguishing among three types of ethnic bias: garden variety prejudice when groups simply dislike each other, xenophobia when groups form essentially negative opinions of each other, and chimeria when outgroups are demonized as bearers of monstrous powers. Jews, at different times, have been the object of all such prejudices, but increasingly they are the objects of chimerical prejudice in particular, according to Langmuir. “Chimeria” is a neologism based on the myth of the Chimæra—a beast that is part lion, part goat, and part snake. Lions, goats, and snakes are, of course, real; however, chimeras are mythical. Chimeria, then, is the belief in mythical creatures. Jews, according to Langmuir, have had the bad luck to be perceived as if they were fabulous monsters while their real attributes are dismissed or disdained. Other groups have been maligned in similarly fanciful ways, but no group has been so fantastically derogated, for so long, in so many places. The key to this uniquely chimerical status lies in the central and defining role of the Jews in “Judeo-Christian” and world history.
The Israelites and Christianity The Israelites first distinguished themselves, in the days of the prophets, by claiming an exclusive covenant with an all-powerful God, Yahweh (YHWH). This was not always a self-congratulatory claim; the prophets castigated the Israelites for forsaking the covenant, insisting that Israelite misfortunes (e.g., defeat, persecution, captivity) were their just desserts, but it was a charismatic claim nonetheless. YHWH was deemed the ultimate deity, and the Israelites were designated YHWH’s chosen, if errant, people.
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The strength of this faith was tested by many trials, from the Babylonian captivity to the massacre at Masada. At every step, the Israelites (whether free or captive, in Palestine or in diaspora) renewed their charismatic claim as YHWH’s “chosen ones,” the unique heirs to Mosaic revelation. Living along the caravan route between Assyria and Egypt and exposed to the depredations of empires, the Israelites preserved their unity by fanatical devotion to their creed. At times they were reviled for this fanaticism. But until Christianity sprang from the ferment of Hellenic and Mosaic religion, this “odium” was, analytically speaking, xenophobic, not chimeric. Only when the Jews were first depicted as inversely charismatic enemies— specifically as Christ killers, as God’s betrayers—did a chimerical variable enter the equation. The Jews, of course, occupy a central position in the New Testament. They retain their status as the sacred people of the Old Testament, but now they are also seen as traitors who betray God’s son, God’s gift to humanity as a whole. The Jews, by “hardening their hearts” to Christ’s divinity, forfeit God’s favor. This makes them the failed precursors of the new faith. As such, they become opposition incarnate, cautionary figures who by their very disqualification as God’s chosen yield this qualification to others. This gives them an exemplary role in the gospel dramaturgy. And yet, nonetheless, they remain a thorn in the side of believers because, with “stiff-necked” obstinacy, they persistently reject the revelation that builds on their own. Rather than sharing the charisma of Mosaic revelation with the new messiah, they reserve it for themselves. Thus, they remain a rankling reminder of the new faith’s inability to conquer its iconic forebears. Thus, criticism of the Jews was central to the emergent Christian theology of Roman and medieval times. At times this criticism gave way to denunciations of the kind familiar from the adversus Judaeus tradition. Writings by Chrysostom and others fall into this category. But in the first millennium, it was unusual for theology to inspire pogroms. Mass anti-Jewish action was rare. Jews were icons of disbelief, but they were not, in the main, enemies to be scourged.
The advance of Islam and the weakening of Byzantium also proved to be unsettling. Fierce jurisdictional disputes divided the Roman papacy from the Holy Roman emperors, antinomian heresies and millennial fantasies flourished, and chimeric prejudice became common, for example, manifest in sorcery fears and witch hunts (directed, above all, against lepers, widows, Lombards, and Jews). A sense that the world was coming unhinged, that daily life was ruled by occult and malevolent forces, began to infuse public sensibilities. Jews, in particular, began to seem uncanny and menacing. The first Crusade, begun in 1095 with the goal of reconquering Muslim-ruled Jerusalem, showed the force of this superstitious dread. Jews were often collateral victims of crusader violence. The spirit of this violence—exorcistic and expropriatory—permeated a traumatized culture so that, when the Black Death broke out in 1349, Europeans had already grown accustomed to chimeric charges against Jews, ranging from child murder to well poisoning. The fact that similar charges are still current, in places as diverse as Slovakia and Saudi Arabia, testifies to the breadth of their diffusion during this period. Jews, who had earlier been decried as unbelievers, were now reviled as miniature anti-Christs. When, in the same period, they began to figure as money lenders—because handling money was taboo for Christians—they were censured as usurers. This charge, in particular, ultimately had fateful consequences. Late medieval Europe witnessed many anti-Jewish innovations, including expulsions and inquisitions. England, Spain, and Germany led the way, forcing Jews into an ever widening diaspora. Growing enclaves of Ostjuden—“eastern Jews”—sprang up in Russia, Poland, and the Baltics. These populations also were subject to persecution, including Cossack violence. But chimerical bias during this period remained a fairly minor source of Jewish woes compared with ordinary ethnic and religious prejudice. Feelings toward the Jews were hedged in with magical dread (hence with chimeria), but more often than not Jews in early modern Europe were ostracized but not utterly demonized.
Medieval Instability
The Role of Capitalism
The situation changed during the late medieval period. The reasons for this change are complex and can only be intimated here. One factor, for example, may be the commercial revolution of the 11th century, which proved to be destabilizing with anomic effects.
The ratio of chimeria to lesser prejudices began to shift decisively when capitalism entered the picture. As money became unmistakably a world-changing power, Jews, who had become nearly synonymous with money, acquired an even more odious and uncanny
Anti-Semitism
reputation than before. This happened by infinitesimal degrees, but a crucial moment can be identified in the surge of railroad building that occurred in Central Europe during the 1830s and thereafter. The Rothschild-financed Northern Railway, in particular, roused jeering antipathy, inspiring rallies, broadsides, and even poetry. Friedrich Engels, at the time, observed that Jews figured in this movement as money personified; the anger they attracted was diverted from capital, which, as a strictly impersonal force, was far harder to grasp. It was easier to blame the Jews—for guilt by association with Rothschild, with money, or with both—than to blame the structural dynamics of an invisible, silent inscrutable system. Karl Marx, decades later, said that the public is often drawn to an invidious distinction between productive and parasitic capital. Because production is valued, industry is praised and profit from industry is applauded; however, interest from lending appears to be parasitic, springing not from industry but rather from the sheer manipulation of needs, debts, and numbers. If Marx had added, with Engels, that parasitic capital is routinely identified with Jewry, he would have brought us to the threshold of modern antiSemitism in one of its principal forms. Jews are demonized not merely as religious recalcitrants but also as parasites—as rapacious and calculating Shylocks preying on producers. The “Jew as banker,” personifying parasitic finance capital, is among the master themes of modern anti-Semitism. This first became apparent during the late 19th century, and it has since become so widely known that it borders on the obvious. The Long Depression of 1873 to 1896 was a major turning point. Until then, no single crisis had ensnared all the Euro-Atlantic economies at once. Capitalism had been growing by leaps and bounds, but its growing pains had been felt locally and regionally. Now, for the first time, a tear in the fabric of the capitalist system became universally evident. Insecurity about wages and profits became common across the spectrum; job loss and business failure became nearly universal fears. Disoriented, the public sought answers. Often, instead, they found scapegoats. It was not preordained that the Jews would be blamed for this crisis. For example, in the youthful United States, where antibank sentiment materialized during the panic of 1819 and matured during the Jacksonian years, the scapegoat for crisis was not the Jews but rather the Freemasons. An anti-Masonic scare of major proportions played a notable role in
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early mass politics in the United States, while Jews were ignored. Initially, something similar happened in Europe as well. When the first major anti-Semitic writers began to bewail modernity and berate the Jews during the 1880s, they pointed accusing fingers at the Masons as well. Catholic tradition, in particular, made the Masons a familiar scapegoat, so when Edouard Drumont and others began to publish conspiracy theories about the masterminds who they alleged were the sponsors of sedition and crisis, they singled out the Masons as often as they did Jews. But the equation of Jews with money proved to be decisive. Finance capital was having too obviously corrosive an effect on society to be ignored, farmers and small shopkeepers were pushed to the brink of survival, and workers fell deeply into debt. By the turn of the 20th century, Jews had eclipsed the Masons as the chosen ones of modern chimeria. They became fantasy figures or objects of obsession. This chimeric status was confirmed when the Dreyfus affair engulfed France in 1894, giving anti-Semitism a mass base. Just three years later, Vienna was governed by a radical antiSemite. In 1919, another Austrian, Adolf Hitler, would join a rightist German group that, under his leadership, became the Nazi party. He was won to this party, Hitler reported, by its anti-Semitism. Germans were besieged, party leaders told him, by a Jewish conspiracy with two arms: the “Red International” of communism and the “Golden International” of finance capitalism. It was the duty of anti-Semites to destroy this menace. Hitler took this lesson to heart. Since then, many others have done the same. Etymologically, anti-Semitism is a modern term, coined in 1879, that was deployed to give a scientific veneer to the claim that Jews are an antisocial “race.” Ever since, ideologues have poured energy into circulating this nostrum, inspiring many analysts to call anti-Semitism a form of racism. This is a fair claim. A kind of essentialism, akin to racism, is inherent in much anti-Jewish sentiment. But sociologically speaking, the ideas and movements called “antiSemitic” are more often fired by chimerical fear and fantasy than they are by pseudoscience. Modern antiSemitism is ultimately a species of demonology best explained by history and social psychology. David Norman Smith See Appendix B See also American Jewish Committee; Anti-Defamation League; Genocide; Jewish Americans; Prejudice; Stereotypes; Zionism
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Further Readings
Adorno, Theodor, R. Nevitt Sanford, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, and Daniel Levinson. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper. Altemeyer, Bob. 1996. The Authoritarian Specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brustein, William. 2003. Roots of Hate. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cohn, Norman. 1981. Warrant for Genocide. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Eisner, Will. 2005. The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. New York: Norton. Goodman, David and Masanori Miyazawa. 1995. Jews in the Japanese Mind. New York: Free Press. Harris, James. 1994. The People Speak! Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Langmuir, Gavin. 1990. History, Religion, and Anti-Semitism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Massing, Paul. 1949. Rehearsal for Destruction. New York: Harper. Neumann, Franz. 1944. Behemoth. New York: Oxford University Press. Penslar, Derek. 2001. Shylock’s Children. Berkeley: University of California Press. Samuel, Maurice. 1988. The Great Hatred. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1948. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken Books. Smith, David N. 1996. “The Social Construction of Enemies.” Sociological Theory 14:203–240. Smith, David N. 1997. “Judeophobia, Myth, and Critique.” Pp. 123–154 in The Seductiveness of Jewish Myth, edited by S. Daniel Breslauer. Albany: State University of New York Press. Weber, Max. 1952. Ancient Judaism. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Wilson, Stephen. 1982. Ideology and Experience. London: Associated University Presses.
APARTHEID Apartheid was the system of racial classification, segregation, and discrimination practiced in South Africa under National party governments between 1948 and 1994. Apartheid entailed an extreme attempt to order a society explicitly and systematically according to racial categories. The context was a colonial settler society with a minority of White settlers—farmers and workers—living amid an indigenous or “native” majority. But the method was profoundly modern as the powers of the modern state were used to maintain
the privileges of the White minority. This entry examines the system of apartheid, its operation, its goals, and its impact.
Classifying People The foundation of apartheid was the system of racial categorization enshrined in law by the Population Registration Act of 1950 (and subsequent amendments). The act provided for all South Africans to be classified into one of three basic racial categories: “A White person is one who in appearance is, or who is generally accepted as, a White person, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a White person, is generally accepted as a Coloured person. A native is a person who is in fact or is generally accepted as a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa. A Coloured person is a person who is not a White person nor a native.” Later, a fourth category, Indian, was added for people of South Asian descent, and the label native was replaced by the labels Bantu and Black. Racial classification was recorded in official identity documentation. From 1970, the Black category was further subdivided into ethnic or linguistic groups (e.g., Zulu, Xhosa). This racial categorization was largely “commonsensical” and consensual, based on agreed and broadly coterminous factors (descent, language or culture, and appearance). In difficult or contested cases, classification was not based on either descent or purely biological markers; instead, the cultural markers of appearance and general acceptance were most important. Although informal “rules” about appearance—including about skin color or hair— were used, they were used inconsistently and appearance was generally interpreted in terms of social standing or class. Overall, judgments about social standing (e.g., friends, work, name, dress, deportment, tastes) were most important in contested cases. The 1951 national population census provided the first opportunity for mass racial classification. Race was determined by census enumerators, who had no specific expertise and received no special training. In ambiguous cases, therefore, classification reflected the prevailing social prejudices of White people. People could appeal to a Race Classification Appeal Board. Although the appeal board tended to find in favor of the applicants, there were very few appeals, reflecting the generally consensual basis of classification. Ambiguous and contested cases generally involved the very small minority of Colored people. “Colored”
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was a composite and diverse category that included the descendants of relationships between White and Black people, the descendants of “Malay” slaves brought from Southeast Asia (categorized separately in 1951 but not thereafter), and (after 1970) descendants of the indigenous Khoi and San who inhabited the Western Cape prior to the arrival of either White or Black people and who did not speak Bantu languages. Although segregation between White and Black preceded apartheid, segregation between White and Colored was a primary objective of the apartheid state.
The System’s Goals Three broad objectives lay behind the apartheid project. The first was to maintain racial purity by preventing the “mixing” or “dilution” of “White blood.” There should be no interracial sex and, hence, no interracial marriage. To prevent temptation, there should be residential segregation by race. Pre-1948 legislation prohibiting sex and marriage between White and Black people was extended to cover White and Colored people. The Group Areas Act of 1950 led to the forced removal of nearly 1 million people, mostly Colored people removed from mixed residential areas when they were declared White areas. In hospitals, patients were supposed to be handled by nurses of the appropriate racial group (although nearly all doctors were White). Segregation was extended to other areas of social interaction—education (separate schools and universities for each racial group), transport (separate railway carriages), and most municipal facilities (separate parks and beaches). Where complete segregation was not possible, partial segregation was implemented through providing separate entrances and counters (e.g., at stations and post offices). The second objective was to ensure and then protect the privileged economic position of the White minority. Apartheid served to determine “who got what” in diverse ways. Long before 1948, Black people were prevented from owning land outside of demarcated “native reserves.” Given the scarcity of good farmland or other economic opportunities in these areas, most Black people worked as landless laborers on the White-owned farms that covered most of the country or as migrant workers in the gold mines of the Witwatersrand. The apartheid state also inherited policies that protected unskilled White workers through a racial discriminatory “color bar” in employment, reserving better paying occupations for White people. Under apartheid, the emphasis shifted to racial
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discrimination in public education. White children from poorer White families were provided with the skills required to sustain a privileged position in the labor market. The massive investment in the education of White children was so successful that the color bar became largely redundant. The apartheid state sought to balance its commitments to White voters with the protection of the profits earned by White-owned capitalist enterprises. Whereas the cost of White and skilled labor was inflated under apartheid, the cost of Black and unskilled labor was depressed. “Influx control” policies and the pass laws restricted where Black people were allowed to live and hence work, ensuring not only that urbanization among Black people was curtailed (in stark contrast to most other parts of the developing world at the same time) but also that White farmers were guaranteed a supply of labor despite being unable to pay competitive wages. The third objective of apartheid was to maintain the political dominance of the White minority. During the 1950s, the apartheid state was preoccupied with removing Colored voters from the existing common voters roll, but thereafter the primary concern was the political threat posed by the already disenfranchised “native” or Black majority, that is, the swart gevaar (or “Black danger” in Afrikaans). The apartheid state sought to restrict the political rights of Black people to the native reserves or bantustans (“homelands”), as they were later renamed. Powers were devolved first to appointed chiefs and later to semielected but largely compliant banstustan governments. In 1975, the Transkei homeland was the first to become notionally independent, with its citizens losing South African citizenship. The apartheid system was maintained primarily through the day-to-day bureaucracy of a modern state (outside of the homelands), through indirect rule (in the homelands), and through ideologies of racial hierarchy, but behind the clerks, officials, and teachers sat the police (including growing numbers of Black police in junior positions), informers, and prisons. When Black South Africans rebelled, notably during the 1950s and early 1960s, 1976–1977, and the mid1980s, the army was deployed.
Impact on South Africa Apartheid not only ordered but also transformed South African society. Discriminatory education and privileged family backgrounds provided White
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children with the advantages of class, such that explicit racial discrimination in the labor market became unnecessary. Economic and industrial policies designed to reduce dependence on Black workers and boost incomes for (White) skilled workers and professionals resulted in capital-intensive growth at the same time as rising unemployment (among unskilled Black people) and, thus, both inequality and poverty. Forced removal of the unemployed and their dependents (i.e., the “surplus population”) from White-owned farms and towns to the reserves resulted in massive overcrowding and the consequent destruction of a smallholding agrarian society in those areas. Apartheid was unable to transform the country’s demographics. The White minority was too small to sustain economic growth; industry demanded semiskilled and then skilled Black workers to produce goods and a larger pool of consumers to buy them. During the 1970s, and especially during the 1980s, the apartheid state began to dismantle racial discrimination in the labor market, to invest more heavily in secondary schooling for Black children, and to lift restrictions on the growth of a Black middle class and a stable urban working class. Petty apartheid—the segregation of parks and other public facilities—was dismantled. Racial discrimination in public welfare was slowly reduced. In 1984, the apartheid state reversed its earlier policies and sought to co-opt the small Colored and Indian minorities into an antiBlack coalition through racially segregated representation in a Tricameral Parliament (with separate chambers for White, Colored, and Indian members of Parliament). Finally, in the face of countrywide revolt from below and intensified international pressures, the apartheid state began to negotiate an end to all aspects of apartheid. In 1994, South Africans— including in the notionally independent homelands— voted in the country’s first nonracial elections. Many aspects of apartheid were not unique to South Africa. In the aftermath of slavery, colonial (and especially settler) societies in Africa generally practiced racial segregation. In the United States and Brazil, most Black people were denied the vote through literacy and other qualifications (until the 1960s in the United States and as late as the 1980s in Brazil). In much of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the U.S. southern states, White people owned the land and landless Black people worked for them. Racism and racial discrimination were nearly universal during the 20th century. The concept of
apartheid has even been applied to cities in the United States during the late 20th century. What made apartheid unique was its systematic depth and breadth, as a fully modern state-ordered society along racial lines, going far beyond racism and racial discrimination to generalized social engineering around state-sanctioned racial ideology and legislation. Jeremy Seekings See Appendix B See also Apartheid, Laws; Discrimination; Mandela, Nelson; One-Drop Rule; Racism; Segregation; South Africa, Republic of Further Readings
Christopher, A. J. 2002. ‘“To define the indefinable’: Population classification and the Census in South Africa.” Area 34:401–408. Norval, Aletta. 1996. Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse. London: Verso. O’Meara, Dan. 1996. Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994. Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan. Posel, Deborah. 1991. The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Posel, Deborah. 2001a. “What’s in a Name? Racial categorizations under apartheid and their afterlife.” Transformations 47:50–74. Posel, Deborah. 2001b. “Race and Common Sense: Racial Classification in Twentieth Century South Africa.” African Studies Review 44:87–114. Seekings, Jeremy and Nicoli Nattrass. 2005. Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
APARTHEID, LAWS Between 1948 and 1990, South Africa was controlled by the system of apartheid (separateness). This social and legal policy was the strict racial segregation of the South African population in all aspects of life, both private and public. Apartheid laws determined where people could live, which jobs people could perform, whether people could vote, who people could marry, which schools or hospitals people could go to, and even which beaches people could visit. People’s race—White, Black, Colored (mixed race), or Asian (from the Indian subcontinent or Chinese)—affected
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every part of their lives and work. People’s race was determined by the state based on their parents’ race or by a series of tests of the color of their skin, the curliness of their hair, and the color of their fingernails. People could apply to change their race, as was necessary if a person wanted to marry someone of a different race; very few people were able to do this. Apartheid was the goal of the White Afrikaner political party, the National party, which was voted into power in 1948. Members systematically developed and enacted laws, described in this entry, that were designed to keep race groups apart in the country and to ensure that White South Africans, who constituted only 10% of the population, were able to benefit the most in the society.
Grand Apartheid Laws Apartheid legislation can be divided into two broad areas: grand apartheid and petty apartheid. Grand apartheid laws determined people’s race (Population Registration Act of 1950) and where they could live (Group Areas Act of 1950) and work (Bantu Building Workers Act of 1951). Tens of thousands of Black and Colored families were uprooted from their homes when the Group Areas Act reclassified large areas of the country as reserved for Whites only. They were moved onto non-White land that lacked any infrastructures or amenities. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950 banned marriage and sexual relations between people of different races. The government sought to force Black South Africans out of White areas completely through the establishment of self-governing homelands. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959, and the Bantu Homelands Citizens Act of 1970 created eight homelands within the borders of South Africa and forced Black South Africans to take up citizenship of a homeland even if they had never lived there. Under the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act of 1952, every Black South African needed to carry a passbook that detailed the individual’s ethnicity, employment, and identity number. Adult Black South Africans were not allowed to be in a White area unless they had a job there. The “pass laws” allowed the government to expel the unemployed into the homelands and to place severe restrictions on travel for all Black South Africans. The
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pass laws resulted in a massive increase in arrests and imprisonment for those who were living illegally outside of their homeland, it criminalized the Black population, and it was the most hated piece of apartheid legislation. Schools and universities were segregated under the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the Extension of University Education Act of 1959. The government did not want to educate Black South Africans to any significant level, viewing this as a waste of resources. The government spent more than ten times the resources on White students than on Black students. Bantu education was designed to make Black South Africans unskilled and unable to compete with Whites for jobs. The grand apartheid laws were strictly upheld by the police and courts. Fully 90% of all police work was taken up in enforcing these laws, which ensured the economic and social impoverishment of the Black population.
Petty Apartheid Laws Petty apartheid laws regulated day-to-day living. This legislation was determined by individual cities and provinces and sought to segregate all local amenities according to race. People’s race determined which restaurants they could patronize, which hospitals would accept them as patients, and even which park benches they could sit on. All public transport, cinemas, entertainment venues, bars, and hotels were racially segregated, and Black South Africans were barred from worshiping in many churches even when they were employed as workers there. Petty apartheid created some bizarre situations. For example, all races were allowed to swim in the ocean, but all beaches were segregated; Black nurses were not allowed to treat White patients; and blood used in transfusions was separated by type and race of donor. The first heart transplant in 1967 was delayed because the initial donor was a Black male and the recipient was a White male; the doctors were not allowed to “mix” the organs between races. Black South Africans were allowed to walk through city parks but not to stop or sit on benches or walk on the grass unless they were employed as workers in the parks. Black police constables were not allowed to arrest White suspects or to go though areas designated as “Whites only.” Public buses for Whites were allowed to pick up Japanese but not Chinese passengers. Tourists who
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were not White needed to carry identification to ensure that they would be allowed entry into hotel bars and restaurants. The system of apartheid criminalized the majority of South Africa’s population. The laws ensured the economic, educational, and social impoverishment of Black, Colored, and Asian South Africans. In spite of the efforts of the apartheid state to uphold the laws through the police, courts, and military, the system failed. Politically and economically, it was unsustainable. After decades of violent and nonviolent opposition to the legislation by political, religious, and social groups inside and outside of South Africa, the apartheid legislation was repealed in 1990. This set the stage for four years of political negotiation and the first democratic election in 1994, electing Nelson Mandela as president. Doug Thomson See also Apartheid; Discrimination; Mandela, Nelson; Segregation; South Africa, Republic of; White Racism
Further Readings
Coleman, Max, ed. 1998. A Crime against Humanity: Analysing the Repression of the Apartheid State. Cape Town, South Africa: Human Rights Committee. Price, Robert M. 1991. The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political Transformation in South Africa, 1975–1990. New York: Oxford University Press. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 1998. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report. vols. 1–5. Cape Town, South Africa: Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
ARAB AMERICANS Although they are frequently regarded as recent immigrants, persons from the current Arab world have immigrated to the United States for well over a century. During this time, the Arab American community has undergone tremendous transformations based on its own internal evolution and external events. A major issue throughout this time has been to define who the Arab Americans are, especially in terms of what qualities and characteristics they possess, and the extent to which Arab Americans are the same as, and different from, mainstream society. This question has by no
means been resolved, adding to the dynamism and complexity of the Arab American community.
The Arab World The Arab world encompasses a vast area across North Africa, through the Arabian Peninsula, and Western Asia (bounded by Turkey to the north and Iran to the east). As such, the commonly used designation of the Middle East captures only a portion of the approximately 5 million-square-mile expanse. This area is populated by approximately 300 million people who can be considered Arabs, although subclassifications may result in certain groups being omitted from this grouping. Strictly speaking, the twenty-two countries that belong to the Arab League (a regional political organization) can be defined as Arab. These countries are Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Although this region has been populated for millennia, the states themselves are comparatively recent, emerging primary post–World War I due to the League of Nations mandates that provided many of the national boundaries seen today. Given the large area and large number of people in the Arab category, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to identify consistent cultural elements that span all Arabs across region, religion, and nationality. Of course, one element is the Arab language as a primary medium of communication. Although the advent of mass media has resulted in the emergence of Modern Standard Arabic, there can still be drastic divergences in local dialect. This can be more of an issue for those parts of the population who have received limited schooling, meaning that social class also can be an important dividing line among the populations of the Arab world. Although Islam is the predominant religion in the Arab world, it is by no means the only religion. The vast majority of Arabs belong to one of the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all tracing their lineage to Abraham and worshipping the same god. Thus, despite variations in specific aspects of theological doctrine, all three Abrahamic branches share many common themes and traditions. Thus, the “religious” divide that often is discussed as the root of regional conflict ultimately has more to do with political differences than with religious differences.
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A more significant unifying element can be referred to as an Arab consciousness, which refers to a shared sense of belonging to the Arab category. When this consciousness has been strong, it has provided unification in the Arab world. At the same time, when this sentiment ebbs, there is a diminished sense of unity. In its places have emerged other sources of unity, including nationality, social class, and religion (often combined in various permutations). Thus, although Arabness can be an elusive quality to concretely identify and contain, it is nevertheless a real element in the binding of the Arab world.
Arab Immigration Understanding the composition and characteristics of each immigration wave provides the best understanding of the diversity within the Arab American community. This diversity means that it can be difficult to accurately represent the totality of the community without first developing an agreed-on definition of who can be counted as an Arab American. Using estimates derived through the 2000 census, the Arab American Institute places the number of Americans with Arab ancestry at 3.5 million. However, due to methodological issues regarding how the information was collected, this can be used only as a general estimate. Emigration from the Arab world to the United States is unique in that there have been many immigration periods that span U.S. history. The presence of “Mohamedeans” in the United States can be traced to trade wars with the Barbary states as well as to the presence of sailors who arrived from North Africa. Although not comprising a significant wave of immigration, this demonstrates the long-lasting relationship of the United States with the Arab world. Research on the Arab American community typically divides immigration into two periods: pre-1924 and post-1965. This is owed to the changes in U.S. immigration law and policy that resulted in very little immigration from non-Western and Northern European countries from 1924 to 1965. Pre e-19 924 Immig gra atiion Wave
Because the Arab world was under the control of the Ottoman Empire during the late 19th century, the United States chose to classify Arab immigrants, along with other persons from the Ottoman Empire (e.g., Turks, Greeks, Armenians), as coming from
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“Turkey in Asia.” Thus, these immigrants were seen as Turks even though the ruling Ottoman authority was Islamic and the vast majority of the early immigrants were Christians from what is today Lebanon and Syria. At the turn of the 20th century, the United States began to distinguish those coming from Greater Syria from those coming from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. At that time, the term Arab was associated with being Muslim and the label Syrian was associated with Christianity. For most early immigrants, Syrian was seen as a more favorable label because the majority of these early immigrants were Christians. As a result, the label Syrian, or Syrian American, became the standard designation for persons from the Arab world. Another issue was whether the immigrants could be considered White or not. This was important due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which stated that only persons considered White could become naturalized citizens. Whether immigrants from the Arab world could be classified as White was decided in the 1923 case of Dow v. United States. The case came to court in 1914 when George Dow was denied U.S. citizenship by a judge on the grounds that he could not satisfy the prerequisite of being a “free White person.” The decision was reversed based on the argument that Syrians were in fact members of the Caucasian race and, therefore, could be considered as White. It was this finding that allowed all other persons from the region to claim U.S. citizenship because the court ruled in favor of their whiteness (even if they always remained on the margins of the Caucasian family tree). Increased restrictions on immigration due to the quota system had a major impact on the early Arab American community. First, it virtually ended immigration from the Arab world and limited contact between the communities in the United States and the communities back home. The vast majority of the immigrant community realized that they would never return to their homeland to live (despite their original plans to do so). Second, community youth in the second generation would now rely on community elders to provide an account of the homeland and its culture rather than having firsthand experience on their own or learning it from continuously arriving immigrants. In this way, community elders, organizational leaders, and others in positions of authority became the cultural authority for the community, determining what proper cultural practice was as they saw fit regardless
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of whether it matched what was actually occurring in the Arab world. The end result was a process of tangential development wherein the Arab American community (and its culture) in the United States would evolve on a different path than would the Arab world. Post-1 1965 Immigra atiion Wav ve
Immigrants did not begin to flow into the United States again until after 1965 when the quota system ended and increased immigration was allowed. The result was an influx of new Arab immigrants into Arab American communities that had existed, in some instances, for two or even three generations. The arrangement of the old and the new in close proximity had the potential to exacerbate conflicting characteristics of each. In many cases, the religions of old and newer immigrants varied. In addition, those who had been living in the United States were viewed as very American (despite any lasting ethnic traits), whereas the immigrants were viewed as more foreign. Thus, while sharing a common ancestral homeland, they did not necessarily share much else. Several basic differences demarcated the communities from one another. First, the later immigrants were primarily Muslim, whereas the early immigrants were generally Christian. Second, most in the early group were from rural areas, had little education, and were of a lower socioeconomic status. Although there were some in the second wave that also resembled this description, there were more who came through a process known as the brain drain, where persons with advanced education and professional occupations left the Arab world for prospects they believed to be better in the United States than in their homelands. Third, the vast majority of the first period came from a limited geographic area, essentially a number of villages in present-day Lebanon and Syria along with some from Palestine and Jordan. The second group came from a greater number of nations, including Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, and increased numbers from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Finally, many in the early group came out of economic necessity and had made conscious and willing decisions to leave their homes. The second group, on the other hand, was composed of a greater number of unwilling exiles who had come as a result of political unrest and regional warfare. Another difference that has received less attention involves the different political ideologies that had become infused in the Arab identities of the two different periods. As a result of the mandate system
after World War I, the partition of Palestine, and the emergence of the nation-state in the neocolonialist era, the region had become intensely politicized during the period of the late 1930s and onward. This meant that part of the “Arab” consciousness that emerged at the time was likewise highly political. To be Arab was to be more than just culturally aware; it was also to be politically aware. Despite these differences, the traditional cultural elements of family, religion, and village/region continued to hold across the divisions within the Arab American community, and this has on occasion provided the impetus for these groups to come together as one. Similar to the Arab world, Arab American community unity and identity ebb and flow with events in the Arab world and in the United States. This makes any study of the Arab American community a snapshot of a particular moment in time rather than a definitive portrayal.
Contested Representations Derogatory portrayals of Arab culture and Islam based on stereotypical characterizations can be found throughout the history of the United States. This antagonistic and suspicious feeling extends back to the earliest period of the United States and has been rendered as negative portrayals in movies and television, literature, and news coverage. In all of these instances, Arabs and Muslims are presented as a certain formulaic type reduced to a finite set of characteristics that are consistently emphasized. A review of 900 films by Jack Shaheen found that Hollywood typically portrays Arabs as “brute murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, oil-rich dimwits, and abusers of women.” The issue of otherness is key to understanding the recurring discrimination and racism directed toward Arab Americans during times of crisis. This has contributed to a sizable willingness among the U.S. public to treat Arab Americans differently after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Polls regarding Arab Americans indicated that most Americans favor profiling persons of Arab ancestry regardless of their U.S. citizenship. Other polls had similar results, indicating a general suspicion of Arab Americans. Although this attitude is not new in the United States, the war on terrorism provides a new context for this sentiment. Ongoing attempts are being made to “rehumanize” Arab American and Muslim Americans. The process of rehumanization involves rebutting commonsense
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notions and practical reasoning through highlighting those behaviors that are seen as positive and preferred. Part of this attempt is being done by national and local organizations that highlight Arab Americans that have made significant contributions to U.S. society. This process is meant to provide a new commonsense understanding of the Arab category, and thus the Arab American category, by highlighting behaviors that are already observable but are rendered invisible because of negative stereotypes and schemas. Recent calls made for Arabs to become part of the United States ignore the presence of Arab Americans extending over a century. Whether this process is successful depends on the suspension of dominant stereotypes, a transformation in typical portrayals, and an expansion of our understanding of the characteristics and diversity of the Arab American community. Gary C. David See Appendix A See also Assyrian Americans; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Egyptian Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Iraqi Americans; Islamophobia; Jordanian Americans; Lebanese Americans; Muslim Americans; Palestinian Americans; Stereotypes; Syrian Americans
Further Readings
Abraham, Sameer Y. and Nabeel Abraham, eds. 1983. Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab-American Communities. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Allison, Robert J. 1995. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815. New York: Oxford University Press. Aswad, Barbara C., ed. 1974. Arabic Speaking Communities in American Cities. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Cainkar, Louise. 2002. “No Longer Invisible: Arab and Muslim Exclusion after September 11.” Middle East Report, Fall, 22–29. David, Gary C. and Kenneth Kahtan Ayouby. 2002. “Being American and Becoming Americanized: Ethnic Organizations and Mediated Assimilation.” Pp. 125–142 in Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible, edited by Yvonne Haddad and Jane I. Smith. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira. Hitti, Phillip. 1924. Syrians in America. New York: George Doran. Hourani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Warner Books.
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Kayal, Phillip M. and Joseph M. Kayal. 1975. The SyrianLebanese in America: A Study in Religion and Assimilation. Boston, MA: Twayne. McCarus, Ernest. 1994. The Development of Arab-American Identity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Naff, Alixa. 1985. Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Said, Edward W. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books. Shaheen, Jack G. 2001. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. New York: Olive Branch. Shakir, Evelyn. 1997. Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Suleiman, Michael. 1999. Arabs in America: Building a New Future. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Terry, Janice J. 1985. Mistaken Identity: Arab Stereotype in Popular Writing. Washington, DC: American Arab Affairs Council.
ARGENTINA Argentina is a nation with an estimated 2007 population of 39.4 million people and is located at the southernmost tip of South America. According to the CIA World Factbook, 97% of Argentines are ethnically “White.” However, this seemingly homogeneous Nicaragua Costa Rica
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population is constantly debating the essence of argentinidad—caught between its European roots and its uniquely “American” experience. Before colonization, the land that is now Argentina was sparsely populated by groups of nomadic indigenous people, such as the Mapuche and the Tehuelche, and by more sedentary groups, such as the Kolla and the Guaraní, in the mountainous forested north. Of these, only the last two constitute a significant presence in present-day Argentina. When Argentines look back to the past for the roots of their national identity, therefore, they look not to the indigenous past but rather to the gaucho—the legendary protagonist of Argentina’s rural origins.
The Gaucho The gaucho was often, but not always, a mestizo or an Indian who sold his knife, horsemanship, and tracking skills to the highest bidder. Much like the North American cowboy, the gaucho is a rural figure, living nomadically, owning only what he carried on his horse’s back. Mercenary gauchos made up the cavalries of armies on both sides of the civil wars of the 19th century. In 1872, the gaucho was immortalized in José Hernández’s epic poem Martín Fierro, which is the first instance in which the gaucho is invoked not as a marginal societal element but rather as a symbol of national identity.
Immigration: Assimilation and Isolation With the success of the “Conquest of the Desert” campaigns, which effectively wiped out indigenous presence in the southern regions, immigration was encouraged with the goal of populating these newly open spaces with people from “civilized”—that is, European—societies. This influence, the reasoning was, would help to make Argentina into a modern nation and erase any mark of the aboriginal or gaucho “barbarism” of the past. The result was that by the early 20th century, nearly 30% of the population was newly arrived immigrants. The effect, ironically, was a turn back to the gaucho as national icon in the face of the changes brought on by this massive wave of newcomers. Itallia an Argentin ness: Assimillatio on Brings a New Natio onalissm
In today’s Buenos Aires, Italian ethnicity is everywhere—from the food, to slang words of Italian origin,
to the newsstands where Italian newspapers are sold. A glance through a phonebook shows as many surnames of Italian origin as of Spanish or other European origin. With the 2001 economic crisis, many Italian Argentines reclaimed their dual citizenship and voted in the Italian elections in 2006. During the early years of the 20th century, however, these newcomers were not yet assimilated, and many feared the changes they had brought to language and culture. During this period, young writers returned to the gauchesca poetry founded by the epic poem Martín Fierro. The gaucho, once a feared and marginalized outlaw, had become a figure of national pride now that his actual cultural presence had diminished. By the middle of the century, the immigrants had established themselves as the industrial workforce that would form the basis of the labor movement and the populist movement of Peronism. Other groups, however, have remained isolated, resisting—or being refused—integration into the ever changing national character. Two examples here are Welsh and Jewish Argentines. Wellsh h Argen ntin nes
The Argentine government offered Michael D. Jones, a Welsh pastor with ultranationalist leanings, 250 square kilometers of land along the Chubut River in Patagonia in return for the establishment of a stable European presence in these newly conquered territories. In 1865, the “little Wales beyond Wales” was established, with Jones recruiting and financing other Welsh settlers. Welsh language, architecture, and customs have survived in this area to the present day. Welsh is still spoken and taught in schools. Cultural centers, such as teahouses and Protestant chapels, dot the landscape in the Chubut Valley’s main Welsh settlements—Puerto Madryn, Dolavon, Trevelin, Trelew, and Rawson. Argen ntin ne Jew ws
Argentina boasts the largest Jewish population in South America. The first Jewish settlers arrived in 1888 and settled in rural colonies organized and financed by the Jewish Colonization Association of Paris, a group dedicated to settling Russian Jews in agricultural areas around the world. The Pampas Jews became known as “Jewish gauchos.” In Buenos Aires, Jewish immigration followed patterns similar to those in the United States—a large
Armenian Americans
wave at the turn of the 20th century and then another large wave fleeing Europe in World War II. However, the 20th century has also revealed deep anti-Semitism, keeping Argentine Jews from comfortable assimilation into the larger culture. In 1992, a suicide bomber hit the Israeli embassy. In 1994, a bomb exploded at the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA). Because the government has yet to solve either case, there is a perception within the Jewish community that it is indifferent to their concerns. Synagogues are heavily guarded and entrance is tightly controlled, with even regular members needing to produce identification and submit to bag searches. The Jewish presence in Buenos Aires is visible nevertheless; the community comes together every year to observe the anniversaries of the AMIA and embassy bombings, with increasing public and political recognition. On a more whimsical note, Buenos Aires boasts the only Kosher McDonald’s restaurant outside of Israel.
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ARMENIAN AMERICANS Armenians have immigrated to the United States in two primary waves with different political and economic circumstances. Approximately 100,000 were already living in the United States by 1924, when most immigration was shut off, and a much larger flood, including survivors of the 1915 genocide, have arrived since immigration laws were liberalized in 1965. Today, the Armenian American community described in this entry embraces approximately 700,000 persons, compared to an estimated 2007 population of 3 million people in Armenia.
Russia Ukraine Kazakhstan
The Present and Beyond The current wave of immigration is from nations such as Bolivia and Paraguay. These people—often marked by their mestizo ethnicity—occupy the lowest social position and often suffer discrimination and racism. Only time will tell how these newcomers—a group far more mestizo and indio than those who came before—will change the face of Argentine national identity. Margaret Mackenzie Schwartz
Georgia Armenia
Azerbaijan
Turkmenistan
Turkey
Syria Cyprus Lebanon
Iraq
Iran
West Bank Israel
Jordan
Egypt
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
ea
dS Re
See Appendix A See also Anti-Semitism; Assimilation; Colonialism; Cosmopolitanism; Creole; Diaspora; Immigrant Communities; Melting Pot
Black Sea
From Armenia to the United States Further Readings
Goodman, J. 2002. “Return to a Promised Land on the Pampas.” Américas 54(1). Grimson, A. 2005. “Ethnic (In)Visibility in Neoliberal Argentina.” NACLA Report on the Americas 38(4):24–29. Rock, D. 1987. Argentina, 1516–1987: From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sarmiento, D. 2004. Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (K. Ross, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
The historic Armenian homeland straddles the eastern portion of present-day Turkey, the western portion of the former Soviet Union south of the Transcaucasian Mountains (including where the present-day Armenian republic lies), and the northwestern portion of present-day Iran. Over the centuries, this location put Armenians at a major crossroads of trade, cultural exchange, and war between the world’s East and West, and Armenia alternated between states of independence and subjugation by invading powers. Through these changing political situations, Armenians
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Armenian Americans
maintained their sense of nationhood, with a distinct alphabet and a distinct Christian Church, the Apostolic Church, similar to but not affiliated with Eastern Orthodox denominations. By the 19th century, most of historic Armenia was part of the Ottoman Empire, with Armenians living as one of the millets, the religious national subdivisions of the empire. Most lived as peasant farmers or petty urban laborers, suffering extra burdens of taxation and personal indignity as a religious minority. Eastern Armenians during these years lived under the rule of Czarist Russia. After Turkey’s November 1914 entry into World War I and subsequent battlefield defeats before Russian armies, the Young Turk triumvirate presided directly over the Armenian genocide of 1915, resulting in the slaughter of between 1.0 million and 1.5 million Armenians and the slower deaths of many more over the next several years. The U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morganthau, and other diplomats protested the killings and saved what few lives they could. At the behest of European leaders, late in 1920 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the rightful borders of Armenia to include substantial portions of historically Armenian provinces currently ruled by Turkey. He did so with ironic timing because at that time Armenia was under siege by both Turkish and Soviet Russian armies. By the start of 1921, a tiny slice of the historic homeland had been rechristened the Soviet Republic of Armenia. An estimated 60,000 Armenians already lived in the United States on the eve of the genocide. The figure had reached approximately 100,000 by 1924, the year that the Johnson–Reed immigration restriction act reduced subsequent Armenian entry to a slow annual trickle. Among those cities and towns with sizable Armenian populations were Boston, Watertown, and Worcester, Massachusetts; New Britain, Connecticut; New York City; Union City, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; and Fresno, California. A typical Armenian community had an Apostolic church and a smaller Evangelical (Protestant) church as well as headquarters of one or more Armenian political parties. Because U.S. naturalization law during the early part of the 20th century required foreign-born persons desiring citizenship to be White (or, in an ironic legacy of the Reconstruction era, to be of African descent), Armenians on two occasions found themselves in federal court arguing their whiteness: first in the 1908 Supreme Court case In re Halladjian and
then in 1925 in Oregon federal district court with United States v. Cartozian. The Armenians prevailed in both cases.
The Early Community An important part of the Armenian American experience, as well as the Armenian experience worldwide, has been the partisan conflict between the more militant–nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Tashnag party, and a coalition of other partisan groups represented predominantly by the Ramgavar party, whose current formal English name, after some early 20th-century mergers, is the Armenian Democratic Liberal party. Although this division predated World War I, it intensified during the years from 1918 to 1920 when there existed an independent Tashnag-dominated Republic of Armenia in the eastern portion of the historic homeland. To Armenians of the Tashnag persuasion worldwide, the republic truly embodied Armenia. Non-Tashnags, during this same span of time, identified with the Armenian National Delegation, which had been sent to Paris to lobby for the Armenian cause in 1913, and its leader, the wealthy Egyptian Armenian Boghos Nubar Pasha. After the republic collapsed and the country became part of the Soviet Union, the Tashnags viewed Armenia as under enemy occupation while non-Tashnags, even those who were uncomfortable with some of the specifics of Leninist and Stalinist rule, accepted Sovietization and considered the homeland to benefit from the Soviets’ care and protection. Rather than fading with time, the partisan animosity grew worse, especially with the 1933 assassination by stabbing of the anti-Tashnag Archbishop Levon Tourian, who had incurred the wrath of the Tashnag party earlier in 1933 by refusing to share a stage with the flag of the “thousand-day republic” at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Tashnags and their adversaries polarized, and remained so for years to come, over the trial and conviction of nine Tashnag party members for the crime. This event caused a split in the Apostolic Church that became formalized in 1956. From the 1930s onward, the parties and other community institutions published English language weekly newspapers and launched youth groups to keep the American-born generations included in the life of the community. As party and church leaders reached out to the youth and advocated Armenian causes in the national and international arenas, they
Asian Americans
promoted and boasted of the intense U.S. patriotism and social integration of their constituents. In this environment, the conflicting Armenian partisan leaders used English language media to impugn each other’s U.S. patriotism as well as Armenian patriotism. The Tashnag party was one of a number of ethnic factions during the early 1950s that embraced cold war militancy, thereby merging U.S. superpatriotism with the sense of a global ethnic struggle to liberate an ancestral homeland from the Soviet yoke. Yet partisan struggles by the 1950s comprised a fairly small component of Armenian American community life. Most Armenian Americans, especially the second generation and now the third generation, were firmly rooted in their lives as upwardly mobile middle-class or middle-class-oriented U.S. residents. Many important symbols of their Armenianness, including novels and memoirs, were those that they could share with their U.S. friends. During these postwar years, many Armenians joined their fellow U.S. residents in moving from urban centers to outlying suburban locales. New Armenian churches followed the migration.
Later Arrivals From the late 1950s onward, and especially after the revision of immigration law in 1965, new waves of Armenians entered the United States. Many were the families of 1915 genocide refugees who had lived out the interim decades in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon. Indeed, the civil war in Lebanon during the mid-1970s and the Shiite revolution in Iran a few years later pushed many Armenians off to the United States. Approximately 30,000 are also estimated to have come from Soviet Armenia between 1960 and 1984. For these migration waves, Los Angeles served as the principal magnet and soon boasted the largest single concentration of Armenians (including all generations and degrees of community participation), possibly as many as 300,000, outside of Armenia. Results of this influx have run the gamut from an infusion of vigor into leadership of churches and other community institutions to tensions between old and new waves and an alarmingly growing presence of Armenian youth in the gang and drug scenes. Social service agencies have arisen to address this concern. Noted Armenian Americans, both past and present, have included Brown University president Vartan
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Gregorian, painter Arshile Gorky, composers Charles Aznavour and Alan Hovhannes, entertainers Arlene Francis and Cher, director/performer Eric Bogosian, Broadway producer Rouben Mamoulian, authors William Saroyan and the two Michael Arlens (father and son), and the controversial “doctor of death” Jack Kevorkian. An estimated 700,000 persons of Armenian descent now live in the United States. Ben Alexander See Appendix A See also Balkans; Ethnic Conflict; Genocide; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Further Readings
Alexander, Benjamin F. 2005. “Armenian and American: The Changing Face of Ethnic Identity and Diasporic Nationalism, 1915–1955.” PhD dissertation, City University of New York Graduate Center. Bakalian, Anny. 1996. Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Balakian, Peter. 2003. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York: HarperCollins. Kooshian, George Byron, Jr. 2002. “The Armenian Immigrant Community of California: 1880–1935.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Mirak, Robert. 1980. “Armenians.” Pp. 136–149 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mirak, Robert. 1983. Torn between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phillips, Jenny K. 1989. Symbol, Myth, and Rhetoric: The Politics of Culture in an Armenian-American Community. New York: AMS Press. Takooshian, Harold. 2000. “Armenian-Americans.” In Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, 2nd ed., edited by Robert Dassanowsky and Jeffrey Lehman. Detroit, MI: Gale Group.
ASIAN AMERICANS Asian Americans are a large and growing segment of the U.S. population, numbering nearly 12 million people, or just over 4% of the population, in 2004.
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Asian Americans
Asian American is a collective term that, although used frequently, is a matter of convenience for the general population. Asian Americans themselves nearly always use a specific ethnic or nationality term for self-designation such as Chinese American or Hmong. Furthermore, Asian American is somewhat confusing in its usage because Japanese Americans and Filipino Americans are considered Asian, whereas people such as Samoan Americans are often classified as Pacific Islander in official U.S. government publications. Large-scale immigration of Asians to the United States did not begin until the middle of the 19th century, although some Filipinos had arrived during the mid-1700s. Opposition to Asian immigrants initially arose among White laborers but evolved into widespread acts of violence against workers as well as federal exclusion acts that barred immigrants from citizenship and ownership of property. Resistance to discrimination eventually led to elimination of these bans. Following passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart–Celler Act), Asian immigration increased dramatically, and today Asian Americans make up nearly 4% of the U.S. population. Their history in the United States is summarized in this entry.
Early Immigrants Between the years 1840 and 1920, customs officials counted approximately 370,000 Chinese, 400,000 Japanese, 7,000 Koreans, 7,000 Asian Indians, and 180,000 Filipinos entering the United States. As a point of comparison, more than 35 million European immigrants entered the United States on the “other” coast during the same time period. The earliest Chinese immigrants, who arrived on the West Coast during the 1840s, were well received by the U.S. residents. Among them were wealthy successful merchants as well as skilled artisans, fishermen, and hotel and restaurant owners. Thus, these initial Chinese immigrants gained favor not only from business employers but also from the government and the public. However, their presence was soon overwhelmed by larger numbers of relatively unskilled Chinese recruited to come to North America. Following the end of the British slave trade, Western powers became increasingly interested in the importation of cheap labor and found an abundant supply on the Asian continent. Contrary to popular belief, these immigrants did not necessarily leave
their homelands because they were devoid of opportunities. Often they were actively recruited and, in some instances, tricked into leaving their countries with promises of unlimited opportunity and religious freedom that were based more on the mythology of the U.S. West than on concrete reality.
Opposition to Early Asian Immigration At first, the growing number of U.S. entrepreneurs welcomed cheap immigrant labor in Hawai‘i and California. However, as the number of Asian workers became noticeable, the new immigrants became the targets of increasing animosity from U.S. workers. Along the West Coast, Asians were deemed as an “inferior race” and became targets of open, and often violent, acts of prejudice. Asian immigrants faced much more than simple discrimination and harassment; they confronted a barrage of laws and policies aimed directly at limiting their rights. Asian Americans became a growing concern for White labor and those who saw the presence of Asian faces as representing a “yellow peril” to the White Americans. What made these unjust laws possible was that Asian Americans were viewed as foreign and were denied the right to naturalize. Without this right, they did not acquire the right to vote until after World War II, robbing them of any political power they may have exercised. The first recorded act of violence against Asian Americans occurred in Los Angeles in 1871 and resulted in the deaths of 19 Chinese men who were either shot or hanged. By the 1880s, acts of violence spread to other areas of the West. In 1885, at Rock Springs, Wyoming, dozens of Chinese workers were killed when White workers of a mining company burned all 79 huts belonging to the Chinese. In this instance, several dead bodies, as well as the bodies of live but wounded Chinese, were thrown into the fires. In 1885, an ad hoc committee of anti-Chinese agitators met in Seattle, Washington, to demand that all Chinese leave the Seattle–Tacoma area by November 1. When the Chinese did not evacuate by the deadline, a posse of disgruntled White Americans dragged them out of their homes and shoved them outside the city limits into the harsh winter. Eventually, these barriers were legally institutionalized on the national level through a series of exclusion acts that not only stopped the immigration of all Asians but also greatly hampered Asians’ constitutional
Asian Americans
rights. During the same time that Asians were met with an impenetrable barrier to immigration, those already in the United States also faced adverse treatment. Asian immigrants not only were legally classified as “aliens ineligible for citizenship” but also were legally prohibited from owning property, leasing property, moving about freely, and participating in the civic process.
An Era of Resistance Contrary to the popular stereotypes of Asian Americans as servile and docile, members of every Asian immigrant group were active in protest. The largest strike undertaken by the Chinese began in June 1867 during the building of the transcontinental railroad. Unhappy with deplorable labor conditions under which they earned less than half of what European American workers were making, 2,000 men went on strike, demanding higher pay and shorter working hours, an end to physical punishment, and the abolition of pseudo-slavery. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the strike led to other protests by Chinese workers fighting against oppression. Likewise, Japanese Americans also have a long history of fighting against oppression. During the 1880s and 1890s, spontaneous work stoppages to protest unjust work conditions were a recurring phenomenon throughout the Hawaiian sugar plantations. In the first organized strike by the Japanese plantation workers in 1904, nearly 1,200 men forced sugar plantation owners to meet several key demands. After a series of smaller strikes, 7,000 men rose against the major plantations on Oahu for four months in 1909. In many instances, several diverse Asian American groups came together to forward their common causes. In 1919, Japanese and Filipino workers started organizing to fight the conditions on the sugar plantations. When the Filipino strike funds ran out, Japanese supporting the strike housed and fed them. On the mainland, Filipinos were active in labor unions beginning during the early years of the last century. In 1933, Filipino workers in California formed the Filipino Labor Union (FLU) after the American Federation of Labor (AFL) turned down their request to organize on their behalf. The activities of the FLU became so widely known that in 1936 the AFL agreed to grant a charter to the Field Workers Union, Local 30326, a Mexican–Filipino union. Likewise, Filipinos were active in organizing labor
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among salmon-canning workers in Alaska, among many other laborers along the West Coast. In addition to striking against unfair labor practices, Asian immigrants also took their fight to the courts. Between 1882 and 1943, during the height of the Asian exclusion, more than 2,000 legal challenges were mounted against local, state, and national governmental agencies. These legal cases challenged immigration exclusion, the rights of naturalization, and discrimination. Among the more famous suits filed by Chinese Americans is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 case that led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that anyone born in the United States was a citizen and could not be stripped of that right. In 1886, the Supreme Court held in Yick Wo v. Hopkins that an ordinance governing the licensing of wooden buildings in San Francisco in practice discriminated against Chinese in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
World War II and the Internment Camps Although World War II affected the lives of every U.S. resident, it touched Asian Americans in intimate ways. The images of Chinese, Asian Indian, Korean, and Filipino Americans improved dramatically in the minds of White Americans as their countries of origin joined the United States in the great global conflict. During the period following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a sizable number of Chinese and Filipino Americans found jobs in skilled trades and joined the armed forces. By 1946, exclusion laws were lifted and a small number of immigrants were allowed to immigrate to the United States. At the same time, Japanese Americans confronted a quite different fate. In fact, so complete were the perceived differences between the Japanese and other Asians in the minds of other Americans that in a Gallup Poll conducted in 1942, respondents characterized Chinese as “hardworking, honest, brave, religious, intelligent, and practical,” whereas they characterized Japanese as “treacherous, sly, cruel, and warlike.” Anti-Japanese sentiments reached an all-time high following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. However, historic evidence seems to indicate that the genesis of prejudice was much earlier. According to historian Gary Okihiro, military intelligence began collecting information on Japanese immigrants and their U.S.-born
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children as early as 1918 following the Russo– Japanese War. In fact, careful collaboration among military intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Census Bureau led to the immediate arrest of 1,700 Japanese American community leaders on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. Those who were incarcerated immediately included ministers, teachers, officers of community organizations, and newspaper editors. In contrast, while the war with Germany and Italy raged earlier and more intensely, little was done to collect information about German and Italian resident aliens living in the United States. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the designation of military areas and giving John L. DeWitt, the secretary of war, absolute power to protect these areas as he saw fit. What began as a slow voluntary movement of Japanese Americans from the West Coast soon turned into a rapid succession of forced removal. In all, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were Americanborn citizens, were imprisoned in internment camps in a handful of states. For years, Japanese Americans lived as virtual prisoners, robbed of their property, their dignity, and their rights. They also suffered the disintegration of their community and their families as members of the younger generation were used by military leaders to undermine the authority of the older generation.
Whether the framers of the new laws truly meant there to be equal treatment of immigrants from all parts of the world as outlined by the new law or intended to continue to favor European immigrants is a point of major historical contention. At the same time, it is important to note that the preference categories favored immediate family reunification, a fact that should have favored European immigrants over Asian immigrants because there were more European immigrants and their descendants overall. Historians have pointed out that the framers of the new immigration acts did not expect Asian immigration to increase and assumed that Europeans would continue to make up the vast number of immigrants. However, the original architects of the new immigration laws did not take into account the number of “war brides” who had arrived in the United States following World War II and the Korean War, nor did they anticipate those who would arrive following the Vietnam War. Following these developments, Asian Americans quickly became the fastest growing population group in the United States. Since 1965, the growth of the Asian American population has been dramatic. In 1980, Asian Americans made up 1.4% of the U.S. population. By the 2000 census, that percentage had grown to 3.9%, based largely on new immigration. Today, the U.S. Census estimates that there are nearly 14 million Asian Americans in the country, with the majority of Asian Americans living on the West Coast and more than a third living in California alone.
Changes Caused by the Cold War During the cold war, the United States perceived itself as the leader of the free world. However, in the global arena, the United States found itself facing increasingly hostile communist nations. In an effort to halt the spread of communism, the United States fought wars in Korea and Vietnam and also armed indigenous groups in a number of countries in an effort to strengthen opposition to leftist governments. Increasingly, the image of the United States as the leader of the free world became harder to maintain under the shadow of the immigration veil. The U.S. government found an answer to this dilemma through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart–Celler Act), which finally eliminated “national origin” as a measuring stick for migration rights. Legally, at least, Asian immigrants were finally put on equal footing with European immigrants.
The Legacy of Immigration and Refugee Policies The legacy of immigration and refugee policies, coupled with U.S. foreign policy, has left unique marks on the Asian American population. The Asian American population today is a mix of dozens of different ethnic groups and represents every spectrum of the human experience. Although the Asian American median household income is the highest in the nation among racial/ethnic groups, this measure ignores the fact that most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and urban areas, where incomes are generally higher, and that more Asian family members are in the workforce. Despite the success of some Asian groups, most Asian American ethnic groups experience higher levels of poverty than do Whites. The poverty rate of some Asian ethnic groups, such as
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NV
AZ
ID
UT
NM
CO
WY
MT
Estimated Percentages of Asians in the United States in 2005
HI
CA
OR
WA
TX
KS
NE
SD
ND
OK
MN
AR
LA
MO
IA
MS
IL
WI
MI
KY TN
AL
IN
MI
SC
NC
VA
FL
WV
GA
OH
PA MD
NY
Percent Asians 0% – 2% 2.1% – 9.9% 10% +
NH
DE
NJ
MA CT RI
VT
ME
Source: Developed by Egan Urban Center, DePaul University, Chicago, from U.S. Census data, County Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, July 1, 2005; used by permission.
Figure 1
AK
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Asian Americans
Hmong and Cambodians, is higher than that of Blacks and Latinos. Asian Americans also vary in terms of educational attainment. Although some groups, such as Japanese, have higher educational attainment than do Whites, other groups lag behind significantly. Among Asian Americans, 64% were born outside of the United States. The diverse Asian American population includes members of dozens of different ethnic groups who speak many different languages and dialects. Chinese, Filipinos, and Asian Indians are currently the most populous Asian groups in the United States. followed closely by Koreans and Vietnamese.
Conflict and Tensions Limited English proficiency and lack of other employment opportunities forced many recently arriving Asian immigrants into self-employment, although as with most immigrants, English proficiency is typical by the third generation—in other words, the grandchildren of the immigrants who speak little and write less in the language of their forbearers. Lacking start-up capital, most Asian American immigrant arrivals found entrepreneurial opportunities in largely poor Black and Latino enclaves, where they have come to dominate certain types of businesses such as liquor stores, laundromats, nail salons, and wig shops. Unfortunately, the presence of Asian storeowners in Black and Latino communities has contributed to rising racial tensions in U.S. cities, with Black and Latino customers accusing Asian storeowners of being rude and not giving back to the community. Racial tensions came to a boiling point during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Following the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, large parts of the greater Los Angeles area erupted in an urban riot during the summer of 1992. During the riot, Korean-owned stores were targeted for destruction in what many scholars have called a scapegoating of Korean-owned businesses for larger societal inequalities.
Asian American Panethnicity During recent decades, the rise in political consciousness among Asian Americans has led to the formation of panethnic coalitions. Asian American panethnicity refers to the process by which different Asian American groups have come to share a common racial
identity. During the student movements of the 1960s, Asian American activists from different ethnic groups began to see their experiences as being historically similar. In addition, they came to see the small population of specific Asian groups as a hindrance when it came to demanding social services, extending political clout, and fighting racial injustice. In light of this, young Asian American activists established panethnic newspapers, arts organizations, and social service agencies to lay claim to government resources and fight for progressive policies. As Yen Le Espiritu noted, it would have been impossible for any single Asian ethnic group to contest the system of racial inequality without such panethnic coalitions. Coalitions built to deal with common ethnic grievances often tend to promote the concerns of just one group over others; thus, these coalitions tend to be fragile and to rupture easily. Different Asian groups need to find a theoretical perspective that will help them to share a sense of racial/ethnic history. As a new discipline taught today in more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities, Asian American Studies examines the shared experiences of Asian Americans in the United States. Chong-suk Han and Kimberly Goyette See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Afghan Americans; Asian American Studies; Cambodian Americans; Chin, Vincent; China; Chinese Americans; Filipino Americans; Hawaiians; Indian Americans; Indonesian Americans; Japanese Americans; Kitano, Harry H. L.; Korean Americans; Laotian Americans; Myanmarese Americans; Pacific Islanders; Pakistani Americans; Pan-Asian Identity; Sri Lankan Americans; Thai Americans; Tibetan Americans; Vietnamese Americans
Further Readings
Chan, Sucheng. 1991. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston, MA: Twayne. Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Pan-Ethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kibria, Nazli. 2002. Becoming Asian American. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Okihiro, Gary. 2001. The Columbia Guide to Asian American History. New York: Columbia University Press. Takaki, Ronald. 1989. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin Books.
Asian Americans, New York City
ASIAN AMERICANS, NEW YORK CITY New York City has always been a major entry point for immigrants, and Asians of various ethnicities form a large and vibrant portion of the immigrant community. Many studies have looked at the contributions of Asian Americans as workers in New York’s service industries, such as the health sector, and as entrepreneurs opening grocery stores and restaurants. Their educational attainment provides a rich ethnic and cultural diversity to the city and, thus, can make the United States a model to the world as a nation of diverse society, researchers suggest. This entry discusses how Asian American immigrants are presented in the most recent ethnographic studies about their socioeconomic and cultural adaptation and contribution in the City of New York.
Building Communities The recent immigration to the United States has changed the racial/ethnic composition of the country. The U.S. Census showed that the total population was 281.4 million people in 2000. The largest immigrant group was Hispanics, accounting for approximately 13.1 million people. The second largest group came from Asia and accounted for approximately 12 million people. Some of the Asian groups, such as Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Filipinos, have been in the United States for several generations. Other groups, such as Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis, are comparatively recent immigrants. New York has the largest Asian population with 872,777 people. Many immigrant scholars call New York City the most ethnically mixed community in the world. There are three “Chinatowns” today, with Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn joining the original Chinese neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. There are also many other Asian neighborhoods such as Little India in Jackson Heights in Queens. More than half of New York’s Asian population lives in Queens. Dozens of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi grocery stores and restaurants can be found in these neighborhoods. Here one can find Korean storeowners dealings in wigs, handbags, gift articles, hats, shoes, and the like. In Chinatowns, one can find beautiful temples, shopping stores, and Chinese bookstores. Without these immigrants, scholars argue, New York would be
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a smaller, poorer, and less diverse city. With their arrival, New York joins Los Angeles as the nation’s premier magnet for global population flows. New York’s Asian population is extremely diverse in background and resources. The immigrant community includes the well educated seeking to protect their wealth in unstable economies back home, children of the middle class searching for wider opportunities, and large numbers of unskilled people looking for better opportunities for themselves and their families. Some groups, such as Indians and Chinese, actually have high rates of academic and professional skills and have shown strong signs of economic mobility, especially in the private and social services sectors. Alejandra Portes and G. Ruben Rambout gave an example of an Indian doctor who achieved tremendous success in academics and came to the United States along with his wife, also a doctor. Their combined income is in the six figures, affording them a comfortable lifestyle and a certain influence and standing. Social scientists observe ethnic ties as an important aspect of flourishing Asian communities in New York City. Their ethnographic studies describe the lifestyle of Asian immigrants in Elmhurst–Corona, Queens. These studies are full of details and contain useful summaries of interviews. The most visible component of Asian American lifestyle, according to these studies, can be observed by visiting these neighborhoods to spend many hours at parks, playgrounds, and small shopping malls; to eat in local restaurants; and to visit schools and libraries. These studies observe political protests, festivals, park openings, and block cleanings that cross lines of ethnicity and race and underscore the tradition of values shared by all.
Getting to Work Even Asian immigrants who live in the suburban areas of New York City often continue to shop and conduct business within the ethnic enclaves in the city. In one of the ethnographic studies, a bank employee from China who is a frequent visitor to Chinatown in Manhattan said, “I feel like I am home in the city. You get the music, you get the food. You get everything.” This example also points out something in the direction of the enclave economy that provides a main route for immigrants’ economic and social achievements. One interesting element of ethnic business is that these self-employed immigrants, through the help
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Asian Americans, New York City
of family members, are often able to minimize the risk of failure by engaging in multiple employment. For example, the wife of a grocery store owner works in the store until 5 p.m. She has another job in the nearby hospital, where she works until 9 p.m. Her husband works in New York public transportation during the day and takes over the store at 5 p.m. In another case, the wife works in a health center during the day and helps her husband with the business routine in their restaurant in Jackson Heights during the evening. They also have a video store nearby, and their son opens that store when he comes from school. In other words, they are multiple jobholders and collect both wage income and self-employment income. Ethnic business activity varies a lot by various groups and their socioeconomic backgrounds. Groups such as Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis serve both Asian and non-Asian customers and are located in Astoria, Flushing, and Jackson Heights. These neighborhoods serve not only as the Asian ethnic enclave but also as the Asian business center, where they sell all sorts of ethnic food and services. In attempting to explain these findings, however, some studies note that many recent Asian immigrants are not involved in entrepreneurial activity but rather adjust to economic and social change in their new homes by taking low-level service jobs. These studies attribute this trend to the growth of the public service sector in New York City during the 1990s. Columnist George Will once asserted that the U.S. welfare culture encourages an entitlement mentality among immigrants, reducing their individual ambitions. An immigrant might retort, “Why you think I come here, for the fun? If I wanted to sit around on welfare, I would have stayed home.” One Indian who was interviewed for a study said that his fellow immigrants come to the United States to work; welfare, he said, is for children or people with disabilities. Sentiments such as these were also confirmed by Elizabeth Bogen, who ran the New York City Office of Immigration. Immigrants are willing to take low-paying, low-status jobs rather than collect welfare, she said, giving substance to the stereotype of immigrants as hard-working and reluctant to take public assistance.
The Future of Asian Immigrants In spite of some negative views about Asian immigrant groups, many Americans have positive perceptions of recent immigrants. For instance, few Whites
complained to researchers that Asian immigrants who moved into small businesses in New York City were “taking away jobs from Americans.” Rather, one Irish American resident was grateful for their efforts, explaining that immigrant businesses had revitalized the Chinese neighborhood in the Lower Manhattan shopping strip. Their long business hours and low prices were widely appreciated. Many researchers contend that the future of these immigrants in the United States is probably a bright one. These immigrants are putting down roots. Many of these merchants are the brothers, sisters, and other relatives of earlier immigrants. They do not mind working long hours and are ardent supporters of the free enterprise system, the core of the U.S. economic system. Thomas Muller made an interesting claim, namely, that the decline of U.S. cities during the second half of the 20th century was due partly to low levels of immigration imposed from the mid-1920s through the 1960s. Unless immigration increases, New York will continue to decline, Muller argued. In his view, the revitalization of metropolitan areas such as New York is related to high levels of recent immigration that have enhanced the ability of cities to retain middleclass residents. Navid Ghani See also Asian American Studies; Asian Americans; Bangladeshi Americans; Chinatowns; Chinese Americans; Community Cohesion; Educational Performance and Attainment; Ethnic Group; Filipino Americans; Hispanics; Immigrant Communities; Indian Americans
Further Readings
“Immigration Fueling Cities’ Strong Growth.” 1998. The New York Times, January 1. Isbister, John. 1996. The Immigration Debate: Remaking America. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Mollenkopf, John. 1998. “Urban Political Conflicts and Alliances: New York and Los Angeles Compared.” Unpublished manuscript, City University of New York Graduate Center. Muller, Thomas. 1993. Immigrants and the American City. New York: New York University Press. Portes, Alejandra and Rumbaut G. Ruben. 1996. Immigrant America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sanjek, Roger. 1998. The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Asian American Studies
ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES The Asian American Studies discipline involves university-level research and teaching programs that serve and educate students who are interested in learning about Asian American experiences regardless of whether they plan on pursuing careers in ethnic communities. Founded during the late 1960s as a result of student protest, the programs usually have a strong bent toward community involvement. This entry discusses their history and describes current programs and perspectives.
In the Beginning Between the fall of 1968 and the spring of 1969, the Third World Liberation Front led the longest student strike in U.S. history at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University), later followed by a strike at the University of California, Berkeley. The result was a movement that led to the institutionalization of ethnic studies programs in higher education. Black, Asian, Filipina/o, Latina/o, and Native American students who saw themselves as connected to the peoples of the Third World recognized a need to challenge Eurocentric interpretations of history and fought diligently to create a relevant curriculum. Daniel Gonzales, an activist in the Third World Liberation Front and an associate professor at San Francisco State University, said that Asian American Studies—like ethnic studies in general—was founded on three core values: self-determination/inclusion, community advocacy, and community service. Selfdetermination was defined as the right and power of a people to make decisions and to take action consistent with their own best interests; in this particular case, this called for inclusion and representation of people of color in the university curriculum, student body, and faculty. On the second point, ethnic studies faculty members were expected to be advocates for and representatives of the needs of communities where they had primary sociocultural and political experience. Finally, ethnic studies programs were designed to be a bridge between the university and the community, one that involves students and faculty in constructive civic activism and direct service. In 1969, Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University developed a mission statement and curriculum focused on the study of cultural heritage
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and historical development of Asian American communities. Early on, a clear and deliberate distinction was made between Asian (Area) Studies, a curriculum reflecting Western perspectives on the culture and history of Asia, and Asian American Studies, a curriculum emphasizing the primary perspectives of Asians in the United States. The study of culture in Asian American Studies began as a study of production as well as heritage wherein Asian Americans engage in the rediscovery of their “roots” but also create culture in the U.S. setting. During the formative era of ethnic studies, Asian American Studies programs were concerned with meeting the cultural and personal identity needs of students interested in learning about Asian American experiences and working with secondary and collegelevel students, particularly those with plans to work in ethnic communities as teachers, counselors, health service and social workers, labor organizers, and lawyers.
Today’s Programs Nearly 40 years later, the core values and the spirit of the early mission still remain to inspire the general sentiment in Asian American Studies, but much has evolved with regard to research, scholarship, service, commitments, curriculum, and Asian American Studies programs. Pro ograms and Departments
More than forty colleges and universities offer coursework with an Asian American focus. The courses reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the field through a social science and humanities curriculum with significant expansion in literature and fine arts. Some Asian American Studies classes are also focused on areas of public policy, mental health, and psychosocial ecology. Some universities offer departmental and interdisciplinary majors, minors, certificates, and graduate emphasis options. Many schools house their Asian American Studies programs within Ethnic Studies or American Studies departments. More than thirty degree-granting colleges and universities with Asian American Studies are spread throughout the country, with the highest concentration of programs in California. Both the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and San Francisco State University offer a master of arts in Asian American Studies.
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Asian American Studies
Current Persspectiv ves
As an interdisciplinary field of study, Asian American Studies has been counteractive against mainstream ideologies and frameworks regarding Asian Americans. Recently, there has been discourse over developing the proper courses for an Asian American Studies program. Classes tend to adopt a Pan-Asian American focus or a single population or community focus. Pan-Asian American courses tend to be more appropriate for survey or introductory courses (e.g., history of Asian Americans) or those that are thematically based (e.g., Asian American film). Although these courses show commonalities and relationships among the various Asian American cultures and ethnicities, sometimes the experiences of less researched groups, such as Pacific Islanders, are minimized. Ethnicspecific courses are geared toward distinguishing the individual cultures and their place within the broader scope of Asian America. These courses show that not all Asian Americans are the same, but the courses can be limited in breadth by more researched groups or faculty representation (e.g., Koreans and Filipinos vs. Thais and Samoans). It is understood that both are necessary for the holistic understanding of Asian Americans. A perspective that is explored more often is the relationship between various identities and issues and how they overlap. Race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, generation, and age all are key in formulating identity, and it is accepted that these identities exist concurrently within one person. For some scholars, this notion of “intersectionality” acknowledges the multiple oppressions and privileges that can occur simultaneously (e.g., being a woman and a minority, being a recent immigrant and a homosexual). It is important to define what it means to be Asian American beyond a racial or political identity and to recognize how identity is negotiated in various spaces. This also includes the need to discuss the experiences of mixed-heritage Asian Americans. During recent years, the notion of transnationalism and the impacts of globalization on the Asian American community have been examined more critically. The struggle to maintain cultural ties to one’s place of ancestry and the implications of multiple diasporas are being evaluated through extensive changes in technology, migration, and mobility. Asian nationals are also building communities in other countries such as Brazil, Canada, and Peru as well as in the Middle East. Although these migrations are often for better economic mobility, it is not to be romanticized given that Asian overseas labor has not always produced positive outcomes.
Asian American Studies programs that offer “study abroad” programs are developing further understanding of such migrations and struggles. San Francisco State University offers travel study programs to China and Vietnam, and UCLA offers a program in Hawai‘i. Civicc and Com mmunity y Engagemen nt and Servicce Learning
Many students, especially those who are connected to an Asian Pacific American community or who identify themselves as having a particular Asian ethnic ancestry, often come to Asian American Studies with a sincere interest to learn about themselves. In some instances, this searching for their identity is a process of “decolonization” and leads them to question assimilation and the internalizations of racism along with other “-isms.” These political transformations are life changing, and for some students Asian American Studies becomes their entry point into civic and community engagement. Historically, Asian American Studies established the need to be directly connected to the pursuit of social justice, particularly through student and faculty involvement with community service and activism. Many Asian American Studies courses include service learning projects. Service learning is a pedagogical tool that gets students involved with service activities that relate directly to course content while also providing them with an opportunity to learn about civic engagement. In Asian American Studies, service learning and civic engagement can be directly related to community responsibility and community involvement. In many cases, Asian American students are afforded a chance to serve Asian Americans in service learning activities. There are courses that have students volunteer at community organizations that focus on health, the arts, and services for the elderly, youth, and families. There are also projects that give students the opportunity to teach what they are learning in their courses in schools and community settings. In some cases, these service learning experiences lead students to pursue careers in social service, sometimes in Asian American communities.
The Future of Asian American Studies After nearly four decades of curriculum development and program expansion, Asian American Studies has grown into an institutionally recognized field of study. Many of the students who have graduates
Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage
from undergraduate major programs and master’s programs have gone on to serve Asian American communities in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors locally as well as in the Pacific Rim areas. Some of the majors have gone on to master’s programs, and Asian American Studies master’s students have pursued doctoral programs. Many students who have taken Asian American Studies courses have gone on to become educators. Asian American Studies has clearly grown into having programs and courses at many universities and colleges, and it is continuing to grow in more settings. Asian American Studies has become a significant force in shaping the future of the Asian American community. The community and its demographic changes, as well as its political and cultural interests, have also shaped the development of Asian American Studies. There is a clear need to continue the bridge between what is happening in the classroom and what is happening in the community. It is evident that Asian American Studies needs to stay connected to the communities where it is committed to serve. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Raymond San Diego See also African American Studies; Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage; Asian Americans; Higher Education; Latina/o Studies; Pan-Asian Identity
Further Readings
Chan, Kenyon S. 2000. “Rethinking the Asian American Studies Project: Bridging the Divide Between ‘Campus’ and ‘Community.’” Journal of Asian American Studies 3(1):17–36. Nair, Ajay T. and Hilal Nakiboglu. 2004. “Back to the Basics: Service Learning and the Asian American Community.” Journal of Civic Commitment 3. Omatsu, Glenn. 2003. “Freedom Schooling: Reconceptualizing Asian American Studies for Our Communities.” Amerasia Journal 29. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.boggscenter.org/ ideas/edu/omatsu.shtml Orrick, William H., Jr. 1969. Shut It Down! A College in Crisis: San Francisco State College, October 1968–April 1969. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Web Sites
Association for Asian American Studies: http://www.aaastudies.org
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ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES, MIXED-HERITAGE Mixed-heritage Asian American Studies began to take shape during the early 1990s as several anthologies emerged describing the special challenges faced by people whose ancestry included different Asian heritages. The development of literature on this topic became a touchstone for many in the mixed-heritage movement. This entry discusses the development of this area of study and related issues.
Background Some people might call mixed-heritage Asian American studies (informally) Hapa Studies. However, there is currently a great deal of contention over the use of the word hapa as an ethnic label for mixed-heritage Asian Americans. Hapa is a Native Hawaiian term and has evolved from a word that once just meant mixed or part; it was shorthand for a longer phrase, usually (but not always) hapa haole, meaning part European, with the other “part” implied being Native Hawaiian. The controversy lies in the fact that many who use the term hapa are not Native Hawaiian but rather Asian. In Hawai‘i, Native Hawaiians are outnumbered by an Asian hegemony, and the use of the term hapa (often capitalized as an ethnic label) by Asians is seen by some Native Hawaiians as a “cultural appropriation” that parallels the appropriation of the Hawaiian Islands by non-Natives—both European and Asian American. The 2000 census, due to the work of many mixedheritage organizations such as the Hapa Issues Forum, allowed people to mark more than one box to indicate racial identity. Significantly, mixed-heritage Asian Americans, including those who identify as two or more “races” (e.g., Asian and African American) and those who identify as being of one “race” but more than one ethnicity (e.g., Taiwanese and Filipino), are second in number only to Chinese Americans. This means that the next generation of Asian Americans will have a significant proportion of mixed-heritage members. Mixed-heritage organizations also typically include transracial adoptees. A significant proportion of transnational transracial adoptees are of Asian heritage (largely from Korea and China). Asian transracial adoptees are part of the mixed-heritage Asian American population.
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Whereas mixed-heritage Asian Americans are sometimes seen as another Asian American ethnic group, they also cut across all group boundaries and will become even more diverse as they increase in the next generation of Okinawan Americans, Hmong Americans, Thai Americans, Iranian Americans, and the like.
Academic Programs Mixed-heritage Asian American Studies has two homes: within the larger field of Mixed-Heritage Studies, where work on Asian Americans of mixed heritage is held in conjunction with work on African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos of mixed heritage, and in Asian American Studies, where mixedheritage Asian American issues and experiences, including those of transracial adoptees, are examined both alongside and within those of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and other Asian American ethnic groups. A current explosion of mixed-heritage Asian American creative writing and artwork means that future scholarship in the field will likely have a strong cultural studies component. Critical legal studies is another important area for mixed-heritage Asian American Studies, in particular given the history of antimiscegenation laws. This area of investigation also looks at laws relating to racial identity, for example, in connection with immigration and citizenship. Future issues for scholarship are likely to emphasize newer mixed-heritage populations. In addition to the traditional focus on the history, sociology, and psychology of mixed-heritage Asian Americans, future scholarship might also consider this population in the context of war and tourism, health and health care issues, incarceration and probation institutions, legislation around collecting racial/ethnic data, and affirmative action policies. Wei Ming Dariotis See also Asian American Studies; Census, U.S.; Hapa; Hawai‘i, Race in; Hawaiians
Further Readings
Lai, Eric and Dennis Arguelles, eds. 1998. New Face of Asian Pacific America. Los Angeles: Asian Week with UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press. Ling, Amy and Annette White-Parks, eds. 1995. Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings (Sui Sin Far). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Root, Maria P. P., ed. 1992. Racially Mixed People in America. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Root, Maria P. P., ed. 1996. The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Spickard, Paul. 1989. Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Williams, Teresa. 2001. The Sum of Our Parts: MixedHeritage Asian Americans. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
ASPIRA ASPIRA is a nonprofit organization focused on helping Puerto Rican and Latino youth to increase their educational attainment, take pride in their culture, and learn leadership skills so that they can become contributing members in their community. The organization was created to address the ongoing problem of high dropout rates among Puerto Ricans and the selfesteem issues that surface when minority youth are integrated into a different culture and expected to assimilate. This entry provides an overview of the founding and purpose of the organization as well as a brief explanation of some of the many activities that ASPIRA offers its participants. ASPIRA was founded in New York City in 1961 by Antonia Pantoja and members of the Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs (PRACA). A Puerto Rican herself, Pantoja became a successful educator in the United States despite her humble beginnings in Barrio Obrero in Puerto Rico. Troubled by the low educational attainment among youth in her Puerto Rican community in New York, Pantoja anticipated the long-term effects that would be experienced by the community if its future leaders were not educated and trained to take on leadership roles. She worked with other community leaders to develop a plan to create an organization where youth could come together for mentoring, educational advocacy, leadership training, scholarship information, and empowerment through learning about and taking pride in their Puerto Rican history and culture. Originally designed for Puerto Rican youth, the organization eventually expanded its programs to include all Latino youth. Today, there is a total of seven ASPIRA organizations that collectively serve more than 50,000 youth and families annually.
ASPIRA
New York founded the first ASPIRA organization in 1961, followed by Illinois and New Jersey in 1968, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico established organizations in 1969, the Florida ASPIRA organization was started in 1981, and the Connecticut ASPIRA was established in 1990. All seven of the state associations use the ASPIRA Process Model and run many of the same or similar programs, striving toward the goal of educational attainment and empowerment of Latino youth. A proven success, the ASPIRA Process Model is a three-step intervention model that stresses the development of potential. Students are taught to first become aware of the situation, then to analyze the consequences, and finally to take action that will effect change. When selecting a name for the organization, the founders wanted a simple upbeat word that would convey confidence and optimism. They wanted the participating youth to aspire to greater things, so from aspirar, the Spanish the word for “aspire,” came the name ASPIRA. Alumni and participants in the program are called ASPIRAntes. The ASPIRA logo carries a sleek image of a little bird that represents the pitirre, a small bird known for outsmarting birds that are much larger in size. The ASPIRA mission, as found on the organization’s Web site, is “to promote the development of the Puerto Rican and Latino community through education and leadership development of its youth.”
ASPIRA’s Programs ASPIRA hosts a number of programs to assist Latino youth, including literacy and mentoring programs, programs to increase technological knowledge and skills, and programs to enhance wellness and health. In addition, it has developed programs to teach parents how to support and assist the ASPIRAntes through the learning and growing process. Some of the significant and successful programs are described briefly here. Community technology centers (CTCs) are focused on making an impact on the “digital divide”—the technological gap of knowledge experienced by Latinos and marginalized people who do not have access to computers. Driven by the belief that educational attainment will be enhanced through advanced knowledge of computer technology, CTCs’ goal is to increase technological awareness and skills of the ASPIRAntes.
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Parents for Educational Excellence (APEX) is a program to help Latino parents support their children more effectively through increased involvement in their education. The ASPIRA APEX program offers workshops on topics such as communication, understanding the importance of education, getting involved in schools, self-esteem, and networking with other parents. The Community Wealth Development Initiative is focused on a long-term vision of building wealth in the community through home ownership, building organizational capacity, and increasing sustainability within the Latino neighborhood. ASPIRA offers financial, insurance, and mortgage classes for potential homeowners in the community and entrepreneurial classes for Latinos interested in running their own businesses. The Math and Science Academy (MAS) was developed to increase student interest in the fields of math and science and to encourage students to pursue careers in these arenas. Built on four basic components— academic support, a summer enrichment program, teacher awareness, and parent awareness—this program promotes exposure to the math and science fields through hands-on activities, field trips, and guest speaker visits. MAS is assisted by the Community Allies for Smart Access to Math and Science (CASA MAS), an electronic depository that offers educational resources for students, parents, and teachers. ASPIRA has joined with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to teach traffic safety to ASPIRAntes. Areas covered include the hazards of drinking while under the influence, the importance of proper use and maintenance of child safety seats, and encouraging the use of safety belts. The ASPIRA Professional Development Institute provides skill development workshops for ASPIRA staff members and associates as well as staff members of other community organizations that have partnered with ASPIRA. In addition, participants are encouraged and given assistance to pursue postsecondary education. Recognizing that communication is a critical component for success, ASPIRA has teamed up with Verizon Communications to combat illiteracy. ASPIRA’s Reading Institute offers reading programs to address all levels of reading; resources for teachers, families, and researchers; and access to books in Spanish and English for all ages. Since its inception, ASPIRA has worked with more than 250,000 youth, teaching them how to tap into their intellectual potential, pursue careers that will
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Assimilation
benefit their community, be leaders for the enactment of change, and appreciate their culture and heritage. ASPIRA boasts a 95% graduation rate among its participants, and 90% go on to college. Many leaders in Puerto Rico were influenced by ASPIRA during their childhoods. Alma Alvarez-Smith See also East Harlem; Educational Performance and Attainment; Higher Education; Hispanics; Pipeline; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rico; Young Lords
fell into disrepute. It is now considered ethnocentric to expect immigrants to discard all of their traditional values as inferior and to adopt supposedly superior U.S. ones out of hand. This negative idea of assimilation has since entered the popular imagination through the Star Trek: The Next Generation television and movie series. In the shows, the Borg are a race of cyborgs that are connected via a hive network to a single brain that controls all of their thoughts and actions. The Borg travel around the universe absorbing other species into their collective through the use of force. Their now classic phrase to future victims is, “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Further Readings
Alvarez-Smith, Alma. 2004a. ASPIRA. Pp. 43–44 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo J. Aldama, and Peter J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Alvarez-Smith, Alma. 2004b. Pantoja, Antonia. Pp. 613–614 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo J. Aldama, and Peter J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Pantoja, Antonia. 2002. Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Web Sites
ASPIRA: http://www.ASPIRA.org
ASSIMILATION With each of the four major waves of immigration into the United States, nativists worried that the new hordes of immigrants arriving on U.S. shores were “unassimilable.” The classic definition of assimilation described a process of melding where new arrivals acquire the values, outlook, and behavior of the receiving society and over time become incorporated into that society’s common cultural life. Nativists feared that these new arrivals would cling to their traditional ethnic ways, thereby eroding the solidarity of the country, based as it was on a common tradition and common experiences. At the turn of the 20th century, the common tradition that new arrivals were expected to adopt was the ways and values of the Anglo-Saxon American core. Since the 1960s, however, as the notion of an Anglo-America began to be eroded and a policy of multiculturalism became more widespread, assimilation
Classical Assimilation Theory Most 20th-century research on immigration focused on the issue of assimilation, mainly in urban settings. The first theory of assimilation that was put forward during the early part of the 20th century was the notion of “straight-line” assimilation. Using the first wave of mass immigration to the United States as their starting point, these social scientists posited that assimilation was a natural process that entailed new immigrants to a country gradually giving up their traditional cultural and behavioral traits and adopting those of their new country. With each successive immigrant generation, ties to the old country are weakened while ties to the receiving country increase until these immigrants finally “melt” into mainstream society. The definition conflated two different processes—acculturation and adaptation—into one. The assumption was that immigrants needed to shed certain values and behaviors before they could become fully American and could fully participate in U.S. society. This melting pot philosophy frowned on hyphenated identities as a sign of conflicting loyalties, and there were fears that the United States would unravel into a mess of squabbling national groups unless all immigrants adopted a unifying “American” identity on arrival. The message to immigrants was that they needed to be Americans and nothing else. Later scholars refined straight-line assimilation theory slightly, arguing that race, language, and social class could affect the speed of assimilation. They believed that racial/ethnic minorities might have a harder time gaining parity in social mobility even as differences in economic opportunity due to language or culture disappeared. However, these scholars saw
Assimilation
race and other factors as simple interaction effects that could hasten or slow down but not fundamentally alter the upward direction of straight-line assimilation. Even later scholars created a typology of assimilation. The first and easiest stage was to achieve “cultural assimilation” (or acculturation) and involved picking up the language, social mores, and outlook of mainstream society. This was the first step—and the most crucial one—for most immigrants. Thus, those immigrants who lived a segregated life and did not interact with natives were handicapped from assimilating culturally and could never move onto the next stage of “structural assimilation.” This involved participation in social organizations, intermarriage, and the general civic life of the receiving society. Although they had their differences, all of these scholars saw distinctive ethnic traits as a handicap for new immigrants and as something to be discarded if they wanted to fully participate in U.S. society. Sociological studies from the first half of the 20th century seemed to provide evidence for this view of assimilation in that each successive immigrant generation was shown to have increased its social mobility, intermarriage rate, educational attainment, and English proficiency. The majority used a three-generation model where by the third generation, immigrants had fully assimilated into U.S. society both culturally and structurally.
Classical Assimilation Theory Questioned After the 1960s, however, straight-line assimilation theory began to be questioned. Scholars pointed out that the current wave of mass immigration to the United States was very different from previous waves. First, the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. immigrant population has changed drastically since the beginning of the 20th century. From a largely European-origin immigrant population, the United States now receives mainly non-European immigrants. Results from the 2004 census indicate that only 14% of the current foreign-born U.S. population is European in origin, whereas 25% is from Asia and 53% is from Latin America. Purely on the basis of race, it is not as easy for new immigrants to the United States to “melt” into mainstream society as it was in the past. Scholars have also highlighted the changed economic landscape that now greets newly arrived immigrants to the United States. Some 50 years ago, the
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United States was a manufacturing powerhouse that could offer English-speaking, second-generation immigrants blue-collar industrial jobs that put them on the first rung of the ladder to economic well-being. Now, these scholars argue, the decline of manufacturing in the United States has resulted in an “hourglass” economy that lacks intermediate jobs, preventing the children of low-wage immigrant workers from breaking out of the cycle of poverty. Along with these macro-level changes, studies of the latest wave of immigrants began to reveal anomalies that did not jive with straight-line assimilation theory. In certain cases, social and economic disadvantages increased rather than diminished for immigrants who had lived in the United States for a long time. Other studies showed that length of residence did not affect educational outcomes; rather, children of highly educated first-generation immigrant parents performed better in school than did fifth-generation descendants of poorly educated ancestors. Location also counted; immigrants arriving to middle-class suburbs did better than those in inner-city ghettos. Longitudinal studies also revealed that certain second-generation immigrant groups displayed a reactive ethnicity where they reverted over time to their ancestral ethnicity, rather than to an American or even a hyphenated American identity, as a result of discrimination. Some scholars put forward a theory of “secondgeneration decline,” arguing that today’s children of immigrants are caught in a bind that leads to permanent poverty. Being culturally assimilated with their U.S. peers, they do not want to work in the same lowpaid menial jobs as their parents had worked, but at the same time, they are unable to find better prospects for themselves because of discrimination based on their ethnicity and/or skin color. However, this theory could not explain the phenomenon of “model minorities” whose members outperform their U.S. classmates in school without being fully culturally assimilated or even having a strong command of English. Other critics of straight-line assimilation theory argue that it is based on an ethnocentric model that assumes that immigrants’ cultural traits are negative and must be discarded to find success in the United States. These critics believe that immigrants are constantly redefining what being “American” is all about and that ethnic cultures are an integral part of U.S. society. This school of thought promoted “salad bowl” cultural pluralism over “melting pot” policies toward racial/ethnic minorities in the late 20th-century
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United States. It is now acceptable to have a dual American identity—Irish American, Asian American, African American—with the first half of the description indicating the person’s ancestry. Thus, allegiance can be claimed to both ethnic roots and the American nation without denigrating either. However, this point of view does not explain the different outcomes of immigrant groups. Structural theorists take a more pessimistic view of assimilation. They argue that U.S. society is a stratified system of social inequality and that there is an ethnic hierarchy that determines access to jobs, housing, education, and occupations. The benefits of “becoming American” vary according to the strata of U.S. society into which immigrants are absorbed. Not all immigrants will eventually become middle class, these scholars argue. Some proponents of straight-line assimilation theory, however, have continued to defend it. They argue that recent structural changes are what give the appearance of the theory not working. They also point out that the constant high rate of immigration to the United States has not given arriving immigrants a chance to assimilate and merge with the native population, an opportunity that earlier waves of immigrants enjoyed between the passage of the National Origins Act after World War I and that of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. They argue that with more time, immigrants will eventually assimilate into the mainstream United States while gaining social and economic mobility.
Segmented Assimilation Theory In an effort to combine elements of all these competing theories, the segmented assimilation theory was developed. Its proponents argue that various adaptation outcomes are possible depending on the interplay of individual and structural factors alongside immigrant cultural traits and social capital. There are three possible adaptation outcomes for second-generation immigrants under segmented assimilation: standard acculturation into the middle-class mainstream, similar to the straight-line assimilation theories of yore; downward assimilation, where immigrants come up against impassable social and economic barriers that lead to permanent poverty while, at the same time, assimilating with native, inner-city underclass populations; and nonassimilation, where immigrants remain separate from mainstream society (either intentionally
or as a consequence of discrimination) but simultaneously enjoy rapid economic advancement as a result of strong coethnic solidarity and support. The matrix of social factors that determine which adaptation path a second-generation immigrant follows include government policy (either receptive, indifferent, or hostile to the particular immigrant group), societal reception (whether prejudiced or nonprejudiced), and resources of the coethnic community (either strong or weak in terms of overcoming barriers). A strong community would consist of a high concentration of coethnics who are not all involved in manual low-wage labor but who show a spread of occupations that include entrepreneurs and professionals. As such, an immigrant group that encountered an indifferent government policy and hostile societal reception, such a Koreans arriving after 1965, could still succeed because of the extensive resources of their coethnic community.
The Future of Assimilation in the United States Most recent studies of immigrant assimilation seem to provide more positive news about the adaptation of immigrants to U.S. society, showing some continuity with the patterns of assimilation observed among earlier European immigrants. Second-generation immigrant children were, by and large, doing better in school than were their native-born classmates. With increasing length of stay in the United States, immigrants move to areas that do not show a concentration of any one ethnic group. In terms of language ability, second- and thirdgeneration immigrants are comfortable with speaking English and by the third generation have forgotten their native tongue. Intermarriage rates across different racial and national groups are also high. Intermarriage rates with Whites among Asians and Latinos are higher than those between Whites and Blacks, but intermarriage across immigrant groups that share the same ethnicity, such as Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, is also very high. There are some disconfirming data in all of these findings. For instance, Mexican Americans are still performing poorly in school even at the third generation, but on the whole there seems to be evidence to reaffirm the classical idea of upward assimilation. Since the 1990s, more Asian and Latin American immigrants have also been settling down in the rural Midwest and in the South. Mexicans are by far the biggest nationality group among these immigrants.
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Neither of these regions has had much experience with immigration for decades; as a result, patterns of assimilation in these parts of the country are likely to be different from those in the traditional gateways of urban cities along the coasts. This difference could stem from a variety of areas. The very lack of immigration history in these parts of the country provides immigrants with a unique opportunity to define their social position from scratch without the baggage of earlier stereotypes. The significantly smaller size of these new immigration destinations can also affect assimilation both positively and negatively. Being smaller and having fewer public facilities available mean that immigrants and locals will be forced to interact with each other, thereby reducing opportunities for social isolation. On the other hand, smaller towns can be overwhelmed by the sudden increase in demand for their limited public services. Schools and hospitals may become overcrowded and social service workers may find it difficult to communicate with immigrants if they do not have the requisite language skills, and this may cause frustration on both sides. How these towns and cities, as well as their new citizens, are adjusting to their changed environments is one of the new frontiers of assimilation research in the United States. Recent immigration research also argues that the idea of generations in studying assimilation rates is no longer as critical. These scholars argue that the United States is in a state of continuous replenishment of immigrants and will likely continue that way for many years to come. The previous wave of immigration that lasted from 1880 to 1920 ended abruptly, and this made the generation unit a useful variable in understanding rates of assimilation. A person’s generation measured not only distance from one’s individual ancestors but also distance from all first-generation immigrants. This allowed the three-generation model of classical assimilation theory to be developed. In the current wave of immigration, however, the constant arrival of new groups of immigrants mixes up generations so that it no longer has the same potency. Now, a second-generation immigrant may share the same social situation as a first-generation immigrant arriving more recently. They may be affected by the same macro-level social factors even though they came from different generations. These scholars argue that immigrant research, therefore, should now take into account birth period in addition to generation. Anju Mary Paul
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See also Acculturation; Americanization; Desi; Discrimination; Ethnocentrism; Immigration, U.S.; Intercultural Communication; Melting Pot; Third-Generation Principle
Further Readings
Alba, Richard D. and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut. 1990. Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rumbaut, Ruben G. 2001. “Assimilation of Immigrants.” Pp. 845–849 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by N. J. Smelser and P. B. Bales. New York: Elsevier. Suárez-Orozco, Carola and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. 2001. Children of Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Warner, W. Lloyd and Leo Srole. 1945. The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Waters, Mary C. and Tomás R. Jiménez. 2005. “Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:105–125. Zhou, Min. 1997. “Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants.” Annual Review of Sociology 23:63–95.
ASSYRIAN AMERICANS Assyrians, who some construe to include Chaldeans and Syriacs, have witnessed both internal diversity and community integration since first settling in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Members of this stateless Middle Eastern Christian minority, who numbered 82,365 in the 2000 census, have cultivated elaborate transnational networks while adjusting to U.S. institutions and culture, as described in this entry.
Migration History In the ancestral homelands of these people(s), in what is now southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran, many pockets of
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Christians speaking an astonishing array of widely diverse dialects of Neo-Aramaic lived for centuries. They belonged to two ancient churches with liturgies in Syriac, a variant of Aramaic: (a) the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and (b) the Church of the East or “Nestorian.” These churches are often known in the West under the theologically pejorative labels “Jacobite” and “Nestorian,” respectively. Many adherents of these churches left to join Uniate churches, which recognized the Vatican-led Roman Catholic Church while maintaining their own patriarchates and Syriac liturgies. The Syrian Catholic Church split off the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Chaldeans split off the Church of the East. Under the influence of American Presbyterians and other Protestants, some Assyrians formed Protestant congregations, especially in Iran. Migration to the United States has proceeded in waves. During the late 19th century, a number of those Assyrians who had come under the sway of American Presbyterians in Iran sojourned in the United States as students of theology and medicine. After the turn of the 20th century, migration from Iran accelerated, with the bulk of the migrants coming to work in jobs such as painting and waitering and ending up staying permanently. Assyrians settled in distinct quluniye- (“colonies”) in New Britain, Yonkers, Elisabeth, Philadelphia, Gary, San Francisco, and (above all) Chicago; Chaldeans settled near Mosul in
Detroit; and Syriacs, mostly Turkish speaking, settled in Worcester, Cranston, and Patterson. Churches tended to be the social centers in these “colonies.” Secondary migration also took place, including that to Flint (Michigan) for its fledgling automobile industry and to an Assyrian agricultural colony in Turlock (California). During World War I, Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs experienced genocide. Following myriad routes, survivors made their way to “colonies” in the United States. Secularist organizations emerged to aid the many refugees of the war and to lobby for political autonomy in their old homelands. From the 1920s until the 1960s, immigration of Assyrians slowed mainly to a trickle. Nevertheless, during this period, the Chaldean community of Detroit burgeoned as Chaldeans came to work in automobile plants and to open small grocery stores, which to this day remain a mainstay of the community. The ascent of the Ba’ath party during the 1960s in Iraq led to a new wave of immigration among Assyrians and Chaldeans. Many Iraqi Christians had worked for the British military or foreign contractors, but the Ba’thist nationalization of enterprises made their position precarious. Assyrians of all stripes fled the Middle East as a result of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–1976, the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988, the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and the war in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Contemporary Linkages Whereas war and violence have “pushed” Assyrians to leave their home countries, family and lineage reunification have “pulled” them to particular localities in the United States. Many long urbanized Assyrians keep track of up to thousands of relatives around the world. Before World War II, Iranian Assyrians established village-based organizations with chapters in different U.S. cities. Affiliations with ashirats, or independent chiefdoms in the Ottoman Empire, and rayats, or districts under direct Ottoman control, are still widely known even though they have had no official political standing for nearly 100 years. The abiding significance of kinship and lineage affiliations manifests itself in many ways such as the following. First, those sharing village, rayat, or ashirat ancestry continue to celebrate shahre- or festivals marking anniversaries of patron saints associated with those localities. Sometimes the organizers keep
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mailing lists of those who share such ancestry and reside all over North America. Certain shahre-, such as that of Mat Maryam (St. Mary), are celebrated community-wide. Second, elaborate patterns of visiting based on kinship and “tribal” networks are actively maintained, although neighborliness and friendship often influence these patterns as well. Third, wars in Middle Eastern countries, especially Iraq, have had a devastating impact on Assyrians, causing many to flee and live in limbo in Amman, Beirut, Athens, and elsewhere. Although Assyrian charitable organizations have worked assiduously to support them, far more aid has reached them through informal family connections. Although kinship ties have been paramount in the everyday lives of Assyrians, more inclusive ones manifest themselves as well. Since its inception in 1933, the Assyrian American National Federation (AANF) has served as an umbrella group for myriad Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac organizations. A striking component of Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac life in the United States are the AANF’s annual national conventions held in Chicago, Turlock, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Diego, central Connecticut, and other locations. Up to thousands of Assyrians converge on these conventions, which serve political, educational, cultural, and social functions, reestablishing ties and revivifying community sentiments. Larger communities of Assyrians, such as those in Chicago and San Jose, also transcend kinship affiliations inasmuch as they support a significant amount of commercial radio and cable television programming, with the latter including Assyrians Around the World (Chicago) and the Assyrian Television Network (Modesto). Like other ethnic groups in the United States, Assyrians have been upwardly mobile by joining the professions of engineering, accounting, law, and medicine as well as by engaging in successful business endeavors. Intermarriage has slowly been on the rise. Nevertheless, church and community life has, by and large, kept Assyrians clustered in certain metropolitan areas. Recently, their visibility has increased by virtue of the high-profile turmoil in Iraq. Daniel P. Wolk See also Arab Americans; Iranian Americans; Iraqi Americans; Kinship; Refugees; Syrian Americans; Transnational People
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Further Readings
Ishaya, Arian Beit. 1985. “Class and Ethnicity in Rural California: The Assyrian Community of Modesto–Turlock, 1910–1985.” PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. Sengstock, Mary C. 2005. Chaldeans in Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Shoumanov, Vasili. 2001. Assyrians in Chicago. Chicago: Arcadia. Wolk, Daniel. 2004. “Assyrians.’’ P. 51 in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman et al. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
ASYLUM Throughout human history, people have sought asylum from various forms of persecution for their political affiliations, religious beliefs, and social practices. Asylum is the act or process of seeking protection from serious forms of persecution that could lead to harm or death. Persons who ask for asylum are called asylum seekers. Those persons whose claims for asylum are formally recognized are called refugees. In previous historical epochs, churches were often places of sanctuary or asylum. Today, it is primarily the nation-state that provides protection to those seeking asylum in the form of temporary or permanent residence or citizenship status. In 1685, French Protestants fled France with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that had previously granted them religious tolerance. This event marked the beginning of the modern tradition of asylum, with the Marquis of Brandenburg granting protection to the fleeing Huguenots. The contemporary asylum system and the related definition of refugees were codified after World War II. Indeed, it was the shortcomings of the international community and individual nationstates in giving protection to people who were persecuted for their race, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or membership of a social group, and the massive human rights violations and deaths that resulted during World War II, that helped to gather momentum for a robust international protection system. First, the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights enshrined the right of the individual to seek protection from persecution. More specifically, the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defined
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those needing protection. Those nation-states that have signed the Refugee Convention are obliged to properly assess the claims of people who claim asylum and are present in their territories. People may not be returned to the source of the persecution if a “genuine and wellfounded fear” of that persecution remains. People seeking protection under the Refugee Convention must be outside of their country of origin, and claims must be made for each individual case. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) oversees the international protection system and guides and advises nation-states in meeting their obligations to people who need protection. Today, asylum is first and foremost a human rights issue. The contemporary refugee system offers protection to those fleeing situations of persecution, armed conflict, and violence. The tension in this system is between international ideals and their fulfillment at the level of the nation-state. Throughout the 1990s, many states felt burdened by asylum migration and other migration flows. During this period, many nationstates erected barriers to the arrival of unwanted migrants, including people seeking asylum. Increased border surveillance and extraterritorial surveillance measures at international airports and other transit points have made it more difficult to seek protection. For those who manage to enter a nation-state and lodge a claim for protection, internal deterrence measures were increased throughout the 1990s. Such measures include limited or no work rights and little or restricted access to welfare, housing, education, and health care rights. People seeking asylum are one category of migrant among many other “types” of migrants. Migration falls broadly into the categories of voluntary and involuntary (forced) movement. Migrants are also often classified by states as authorized and unauthorized, denoting whether or not they have passports and other travel documents such as visas to regularize their entry into the territory of a state. Voluntary migration includes skilled and unskilled workers and family reunion migration and is usually regulated through visas and formal application processes. Involuntary migration is characterized by some form of coercion or force, where an individual is compelled to leave his or her country of origin. This category includes refugees, asylum seekers, people who are trafficked across borders, and people who migrate for economic reasons or following natural disasters. Involuntary migrants most often do not have authorization for their journey and may be regarded as security risks.
The arrival of persons without a legal right to stay in a nation-state is often seen as a challenge to the sovereignty of that state. The approach of nation-states to the arrival of people seeking asylum had a marked change from the end of the 1980s. With the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the numbers of unauthorized migrants increased worldwide. Nation-states needed to deal with the arrival of large numbers of people without visas, travel documents, and other identifying papers. Some of these individuals claimed that they were asylum seekers. However, particularly Western European states felt overburdened by these arrivals. Consequently, throughout the 1990s, many countries introduced legislative and administrative measures that made it more difficult for individuals to enter and stay in a country. Increased internal and external surveillance and security measures, detention, and restricted access to welfare benefits, health care, housing, and work and education rights are some of the measures that have been introduced to discourage the arrival of undocumented arrivals, including asylum seekers. In addition, many countries have stepped up removal and deportation processes. Not all persons fleeing their country of origin are able to seek asylum or qualify as refugees. Only a very small proportion of refugees or people living in refugee-like situations, such as displaced persons, are offered resettlement in a “third” state. The majority of the world’s refugees and displaced persons live in camps in countries bordering or close to their country of origin. Many live in such situations for years where it is not safe to return home and no other “durable solution,” such as resettlement in another country, is offered as an alternative. This phenomenon is called “refugee warehousing.” The ongoing problem for refugee populations is a lack of human security in the form of access to basic human rights. Claudia Tazreiter See Appendix A; Appendix B See also “Boat People”; Citizenship; Discrimination; Ethnic Conflict; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; Minority Rights; Racism; Refugees Further Readings
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Benhabib, S. 2004. The Rights of Others. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Carens, Joseph. 1987. “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” Review of Politics 49:251–273. Cohen, Roberta and Francis M. Deng. 1998. Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Goodwin-Gill, Guy S. 2001. “Asylum 2001: A Convention and a Purpose.” International Journal of Refugee Law 13:1–15. Marrus, Michael R. and Anna C. Bramwell. 1988. Refugees in the Age of Total War. London: Unwin Hyman. Marfleet, Philip. 2006. Refugees in a Global Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Zolberg, Aristide, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. 1989. Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press.
AUSTRALIA Australia, a land of hundreds of Aboriginal clans, was claimed by the British during the late 18th century. It was named during the 19th century (it had previous Portuguese, Dutch, and French names) after the original Latin Terra Australis (the “South Land”). It is an island continent between the Pacific and Indian oceans, south of the Southeast Asian archipelagos. It is approximately the same physical size as the continental United States and has a population of approximately 21 million. Most of the population lives in a small number of large cities within 100 kilometers of the coast. The urban populations are more culturally diverse and educated, and the rural populations are more culturally homogeneous and less well educated. Indigenous people tend to live in the rural areas, although there are significant numbers in the suburbs of the major cities. Approximately 23% of the population was born outside of Australia, and 27% had at least one parent born outside of Australia. Power is shared between the Commonwealth government in Canberra and the six state and two territory governments. This entry examines the social patterns of race and ethnicity and the political processes associated with them. Although some reference is made to Aboriginal Australians, the focus of this entry is the culturally diverse makeup of the population as a result of immigration.
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Race and Racism In Commonwealth law, neither racism nor race is defined. Rather, laws such as the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Racial Hatred amendments to that act in 1995 reflect Australia’s acceptance of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. They prohibit discrimination (distinction, exclusion, restriction, and preference) on the basis of race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin in relation to any human right or fundamental freedom. Other laws at the state level also prohibit discrimination on race, ethnic background, national origin, and (in some cases) religion. Australian governments have passed legislation at the state and federal levels seeking to define and outlaw racism. Although Australia has not been at the forefront in international forums confronting racism, it has for the most part aligned itself with the more progressive nations. It is important to recognize that there are two competing and conflicting social discourses about race current in the society: (a) one that is based on humanitarian, universal, and cosmopolitan values and that welcomes cultural differences and decries racism and prejudice and (b) one that is defensive of the myths of the core culture, denies that racism is a problem, and stresses values associated with assimilation into British/Australian culture. Australian law claims to desire the former of these social discourses while needing to take into account and accept elements of the latter. The balance of the compromise has been a central concern of the politics of race since 1973, when White Australia was put to rest, multiculturalism was first enunciated as a policy to replace assimilationism, and indigenous land rights were firmly placed on the political agenda. Most colonial settler societies, of which Australia is included, have been predicated on a primary racist assumption—the right of European powers to appropriate the wealth and resources of other societies. Australia, as a concept and as a reality, was created by two centuries of imperial struggle. The core myths and social practices of Australia reflect this history. Moreover, the issue of how to “read” Australian history has become highly politicized. In 1996, Prime Minister John Howard (head of government at the national level) argued that a “black armband” view had taken control of what should be seen as a far more heroic struggle to establish civilization in the land. He was reflecting on an argument first developed by historian Geoffrey Blainey, who in 1993 had castigated
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revisionist historians for focusing on the negative elements of Australian history and thereby supporting the development of what he described as a guilt industry. The issue of the history of racism has been politicized, and there is no longer an unambiguous narrative to which all historians could subscribe. However, it is important to ensure that voices of those about whom the history is written are also heard.
History and Social Context When the British government laid claim to ownership of the Australian continent in 1770, it did so within an international environment of aggressive imperialism where the subordination of colonial peoples was taken as a given among European powers. The British justified their aggression through a variety of ideological stratagems, typically combining religious goals with economic imperatives. Thus, Australia would provide fertile ground for the conversion of the heathen natives, who were seen as children to be led into civilization by the enlightened foresight of the conqueror. In the process, because there were few signs of what Europeans recognized as civilized life and no signs of the local people having organized government, their living on the land was perceived as an increasing frustration to be eradicated. Their resistance was a nuisance to be suppressed. When the British first settled/invaded in 1788, there may have been as few as 300,000 or as many as 1 million Indigenous inhabitants. The Indigenous people were seen to have no legal claim to the land and were immediately taken under the protection of the Crown. All of their land became Crown land, and their law was immediately nullified. Wars broke out in the Sydney region, where the local people resisted the invasion under the leadership of a local chief. The settlers were assisted greatly by the impact of germ warfare, introducing diseases such as measles, influenza, and smallpox to which the local people succumbed. The British spread quickly across the continent and the major islands. Early policy kept Australia as a penal colony for the first 20 years of settlement until more land was acquired by new pastoral industries. Christian missions were established about one generation after settlement. The first mission, in 1820, sought to protect the Indigenous people from the worst depravities of the invaders and, in the process, to convert them to Christianity and Westernize them. In particular, the aim was to render the population passive and compliant,
thereby positioning them in menial and servant roles in the social hierarchy. It was not until 1834, nearly half a century into the colonial period, that the first Europeans were found guilty and hung for the murder of Aborigines. Robert Tickner, a former Aboriginal affairs minister, stated that even with differences in emphasis and policies among the colonies, the common theme was the introduction of control over Aboriginal people. It permeated every aspect of their lives—from the food they ate, to the religion they practiced, to their freedom of movement and association. Within half a century of settlement, free immigration was growing rapidly, a tide that became a flood after the discovery of gold during the 1850s. New colonies were established around the periphery of the continent, and significant populations of British and non-British immigrants arrived seeking the free land. Populations of indentured workers were brought in to work the new industries—gold mining and forest clearing Chinese from the Guang Zhou region of southern China, Jat Pathan camel drivers from Pakistan/Afghanistan to build overland telegraph lines, and Kanaka laborers from the Pacific Ocean islands to work in the northern sugar industry. The federation of the colonies into a single Commonwealth in 1901 was driven in part by the fear of non-White immigration and the equally strong desire to create an egalitarian White democracy in the South Seas. One of the first legislative acts of the new nation was to define a restrictive immigration policy and exclude non-Whites. Ideologies of race played a critical part in the formation of the nation both internally in relation to the position of the Indigenous population (excluded from citizenship and political participation, being not counted in the national census so as not to favor states with large Aboriginal and small settler populations) and externally through a definition of racial purity as a social goal. Aboriginal organizations argued consistently for such a Commonwealth power that would effectively allow them to be citizens in their own land and to vote or seek representative office. Various attempts were made to address this issue, and an attempt by the wartime government in 1942 to win popular support for an Aboriginal power was defeated at referendum. The movement grew in strength and support through the 1950s and 1960s until, in 1967, a referendum passed by a large majority empowered the national government to act on behalf of the Aborigines and to recognize them as Australian citizens.
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Although the accrual of disadvantage highlighted the conditions under which Indigenous people lived, the explanations were highly politicized. On one side, a movement that was pushing for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians stressed the social conditions that needed to be addressed. On the other side, a conservative movement with support in the government and in rightwing populist political parties argued that Indigenous people were being given too many rights and that their conditions of life were of their own making. Thus, racism remains a reality in the lives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, with governments facing great difficulty in dealing with both the material conditions of Indigenous life and the attitudes and values of some parts of the wider community toward them. As a consequence, Australia has come under sustained criticism from international organizations such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, to which the conservative government has reacted defensively.
Racism, Immigrants, and Refugees The problematic place of race in Australian national identity is exemplified in the management of immigration. The fierce affirmation of White Australia, which had been part of the crucible of nationhood, was played out in strategies to exclude those who were not acceptable participants in the new nation. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (revised, modified, and finally revoked during the late 1950s) had the effect of slowing, and then reversing, the inflow of non-Europeans. The widespread Chinese community could no longer bring over marital partners, mixed marriages in the northern Torres Strait came under legal pressure, many of the Muslims remained but were cut off from their families and cultural links, and many of the Kanakas were sent back to their islands of origin. A language dictation test was used to filter out undesirables. However, in the wake of World War II, during which there was widespread internment of Japanese, German, Austrian, and Italian Australians, governments of both political persuasions committed the country to a huge population-building program and turned increasingly to Southern and Eastern Europe. Throughout the 1960s, internal disturbance and external criticism eroded the unanimity within which White Australia had been sustained.
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During the mid-1960s, the Australian Labor Party removed its commitment to White Australia while conservative government policy moved from assimilation to integration, recognizing that non-British immigrants were retaining many elements of their own cultures and, more important, had every right to do so within an overall commitment to Australia. This was to become the philosophical framework for all future policies—the idea of a primary allegiance to a unitary Australia. By the early 1970s, the national government had moved toward a policy of multiculturalism, recognizing the legitimacy of diverse cultures within the framework of an overall commitment to Australia. Although racial markers were removed as filters for immigration in 1973, it was not until later in the 1970s, following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, that significant numbers of Asian immigrants arrived. These were predominantly refugees from that war, usually staunchly anti-communist and politically conservative. They settled by the hundreds of thousands in the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne and played a critical part in the transformation and globalization of these cities. Reaction to the new immigrants was not long in coming. Although there had been bipartisan support for multiculturalism as policy from 1978, this harmony fragmented in the wake of the economic downturns of the early 1980s. Leading populist intellectual figures argued that Australia could not culturally deal with the rapid cultural change affecting its cities. A series of government reports raised questions about the effectiveness of multiculturalism and whether it should be retained as either concept or policy. This view was particularly centered in the core of conservative politics that expressed resentment and hostility to the rapid impact of globalization and, in particular, the Asianization of Australia’s cities. The conservative national government elected in 1996 voiced its antipathy to the idea of multiculturalism. Welfare benefits were cut for new arrivals, parental sponsorship rights were cut back, research and policy groups concerned with issues of equity were closed, and the prime minister avoided using the concept of multiculturalism. A series of long drawn out reports through the final years of the 20th century finally created a sense of a more nationalist idea of Australian multiculturalism. However, senior conservative figures continued to argue that the term and its policy implications should be dropped.
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Combating Racism Until the mid-1960s, the Australian government had policies in place based on racist assumptions and designed to have racist outcomes. It was only with the changing political tenor of the period that new government policies were developed designed to eradicate racist practice and confront racist values. The state government in South Australia developed the first antidiscrimination legislation in 1966. Both the White Australia policy and the Aboriginal affairs policies would be affected by Australia’s position in the world. Australia could not avoid supporting UN initiatives against racism. However, even though Australia signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1966, the agreement was not ratified until 1975 and included the exclusion of criminalizing racial vilification. This was done through the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975, which stopped short of criminal sanctions for any actions covered by its terms. Again in 1994, the Senate forced amendments to the Racial Hatred Act, removing criminal sanctions. The first national strategy designed to respond to complaints of racial discrimination used a short-lived Community Relations Commission (1974–1976) with limited powers. It preceded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity (HREO) Commission, which oversaw the Racial Discrimination Act. The HREO Commission has powers to adjudicate in disputes (through a tribunal) and to reach decisions (through negotiation). If no outcome can be negotiated or the offending party does not act as agreed, the aggrieved party needs to take the matter to a court for action. In addition, after the failed proposals for criminal sanctions were blocked by senators in opposition, the HREO Commission was charged with community education. The commission also carries out investigations and prepares reports, including those on the social justice status of Indigenous people, the conditions of refugees, and the experiences and social conditions of immigrants.
Contemporary Issues Australia is a society with an evident racist past and continuing controversies over the nature of its present and future. The national government’s position remains that none of its actions is in any way racist— from the revisions to the Native Title Act that stripped many of the protections Indigenous people had
secured during the early 1990s, to the position on refugees that was described as race free (with the government arguing that it was taking more than its fair share of refugees and that those repulsed were “illegal” entrants), to the erosion of multiculturalism (and the affirmation that Australian multiculturalism rightly placed Euro-Christian values at the apex of the value hierarchy). The post-9/11 ambience of fear of terrorism and hostility to Muslims has pervaded parts of Australian society; in December 2005, race riots between White surfers and Middle Eastern Muslims took place in Sydney’s beachside suburbs. National organizations also developed around issues of racism affecting immigrants and refugees. The most widely known of these is the Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia (FECCA) with an agenda covering a broad range of issues, including discrimination. In a country that has prided itself publicly on its multicultural and tolerant public culture, and that in 1995 hosted the World Cultural Diversity Conference, it is extraordinary how rapidly race has become the hottest topic on the political agenda. Partly as a consequence of external factors and partly as a consequence of increasing pressure from conservative political forces anxious to reassert a narrow cultural hegemony, Australians are less willing to accept social difference than they have been for many years. Increasingly conservative commentators are arguing that many of the perspectives advocated by liberal proponents of diversity since the 1960s should be abandoned. Cultural relativism has come under major attack, with the reassertion of religious-based precepts drawn from Christianity and, in particular, evangelical tendencies. Assimilationism has been resurrected as a legitimate philosophy of intergroup relations, whereas immigration recruitment has targeted English-speaking professionals while restricting family reunion from poorer non-English-speaking countries. In the new millennium, Australia’s public face reflects a generation of legislation designed to outlaw racial discrimination, prohibit racial vilification, and encourage social harmony. A broad commitment to Australian multiculturalism in relation to cultural diversity and to reconciliation in relation to Indigenous people characterizes the formal agenda of political life. However, there is widespread disagreement over the practical meaning of these terms as significant minority groups advocate for the end of multicultural policies and the removal of all recognition of the particular interests of Indigenous people.
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Australia is a society trying to come to terms with its racist past and the reality of its cultural diversity in a globalizing world. Race provides an easy fault line along which frustration can surge and social division can emerge. The interconnections between ideas about race, practices of inclusion and exclusion, and struggles over national identity reveal a sharply divided society with very different ideas about how diversity should be treated. Andrew Jakubowicz See Appendix A See also Australia, Indigenous People; Globalization; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Racism
Further Readings
Australian Council for Population and Ethnic Affairs (Jerzy Zubrzycki, chair). 1982. Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our Developing Nationhood. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Grant, Bligh, ed. 1997. Pauline Hanson: One Nation and Australian Politics. Armidale, Australia: University of New England Press. Hodge, Bob and John O’Carroll. 2006. Borderwork in Multicultural Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Jakubowicz, Andrew. 1985. “Racism, Multiculturalism, and the Immigration debate in Australia: A Bibliographic Essay.” Sage Race Relations Abstracts 10(3):1–15. Tickner, Robert. 2001. Taking a Stand: Land Rights and Reconciliation. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Vasta, Ellie and Stephen Castles. 1996. The Teeth Are Smiling: The Persistence of Racism in Multicultural Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Web Sites
Making Multicultural Australia: http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au
AUSTRALIA, INDIGENOUS PEOPLE The Indigenous people of Australia have inhabited the continent continuously for at least 50,000 years. Today, they comprise approximately 2.4% of the total population, and although they are small in number,
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their presence based on this irrefutable long legacy is highly visible. The phrase Indigenous people refers collectively to a diverse group of people. Often in both popular speech and more scholarly writings, the term Aborigine is used to refer to all Indigenous people, although others argue to differentiate the Torres Strait Islanders, who comprise 11% of the Indigenous population of Australia, from those settled on the Australian continent. In matter of fact, Indigenous or Aboriginal people themselves are most likely to refer to themselves by a more specific term referring to a specific clan or region such as the Koori, Noongar, Anangu, Palawah, or Kulin. Aborigine is also a term that is not exclusive to referring to the first people of Australia. It does, in fact, refer to the earliest known inhabitants, who continue to maintain distinct traditions in other countries such as Canada and Taiwan. But it is contemporary Australia where the term is most widely in use. Aboriginal and Indigenous people are used interchangeably in this entry. The
June Smith and her work at a Sydney art gallery. The artistic expression of the indigenous people of Australia, whether through song, dance, stories, or artwork, has received increased appreciation in the past two decades. June Smith (born 1960), from the Keringe community of the Eastern Arrernte in central Australia, displays her intricate work “Flowers After the Rain” at a Sydney art gallery in 1999. Typical of many contemporary artists, she uses dots and circles as a technique for reflecting the landscape. Although acrylic paint on canvas is used today, this technique mimics the traditional Aboriginal ground paintings or constructions made from pulverized plant and animal material mixed with brilliant colored ochre. Reflecting the versatility of many Aboriginal artists, Smith has designed ties and scarves and was commissioned in 2005 to design the new carpet for the Alice Springs Airport in Northern Australia. Source: AFP/Getty Images.
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official government definition of an Aborigine is a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin and who is accepted as such by the community with which the person associates. This entry describes Aborigines’ history and current status.
Early History Although 50,000 years is the typically stated length of settlement, some archaeologists suggest that the presence of people on Earth may stretch back 100,000 years. The beliefs of the Aboriginal people themselves contend that they emerged from the land itself. Scholars currently believe that Aborigines arrived in Australia from parts of what is today Asia through New Guinea when sea levels were low during the Ice Age. A social system emerged—still identifiable today—that is organized around a clan; its people moved within a specific land area but were not nomadic. Traditionally, they were hunters and gatherers remaining relatively fixed in their location except for some areas in Australia where clans would move depending on the seasons. Today, there is an appreciation for the different techniques used by the Aboriginal people in raising vegetables, diverting water supplies, and making animals edible. However, the Europeans who first arrived in Australia did not see this management of scarce natural resources as agriculture because it did not correspond to the settlers’ notions of farms and livestock management. Historically and even today, the cultural practices of Indigenous people of Australia are very diverse. These people comprise many clans, language groups, and communities with few interconnections except those occasionally created through kinship or trade. When Europeans arrived, there were an estimated 600 to 700 groups speaking 200 to 250 separate languages as distinct as French is to German. In addition, there were many more dialects of a language that could be more or less understood by others. Reflecting this diversity is the spirituality of the people. Although belief systems vary reflecting the changing terrain from the Outback to rainforests, the Indigenous people see themselves as having arisen from the land itself and ultimately returning to the land. Collectively, these beliefs are commonly referred to as “Dreaming” or “Dreamtime” and sometimes take on a style that Westerners view or label as a cosmology or oral folklore.
The Europeans Arrive There are not even reliable estimates of the population of Australia before European settlement in 1788, although the absolute minimum pre-1788 population is given as 315,000. Other estimates have put the figure at more than 1 million, and recent archaeological research indicates that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained on the continent. To offer some comparison, the British government brought 160,000 convicts to Australia. European contact with the Indigenous people of what is today Australia is relatively recent. Only sporadic encounters with Dutch, French, and English traders are reported prior to British settlement began in 1788 at Sydney Harbor. Unlike most other colonies, Australia initially was not populated by true colonists but was used largely as a port of penal colonies created along the coastlines. From the beginning, the British had no respect for local culture and lifestyle. Despite the ability of the Indigenous people to survive and flourish in an inhospitable environment, the English saw little to learn from the local people. The size of Australia’s Indigenous population declined dramatically after European settlement as a result of the colonialism. The impact of new diseases, some of which were not life threatening to Europeans, had devastating effects on Indigenous communities because the people lacked immunity. The number of Indigenous people also decreased as a result of their mistreatment, the dispossession of their land, and the disruption and disintegration of their culture. The absence of any colonial policy with respect to the social welfare of Aborigines reflected not only the devaluing of their position as humans but also a conviction that they would experience extinction. Already by the 1830s, this was deemed as inevitable. In 1901, when the Commonwealth of Australia was formed, the official count was placed at 70,000. As with Indigenous people worldwide, Aborigines were and are the object of missionary outreach. Chief among denominations in the Australians are the Anglican Church, Roman Catholics, and Methodists. Over time and location, there have been significant differences in interference in clan spiritual and cultural practices. Reflecting the spatial isolation of many clans, new missionary initiatives were undertaken as recently as the 1940s.
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Legal and Land Issues Legally and historically, there was little recognition of Indigenous people. Great Britain took the view of Australia as terra nullius—a territory belonging to no one. In reality, it meant that the land was available for settlement and ownership by the English, with the Indigenous people having no claim. In comparison with other countries with significant Indigenous populations, Australia was late in recognizing the possibility that Indigenous people enjoyed long-term land rights. As Aborigines were driven away from European-occupied territory, the concept of reimbursement or negotiation was absent. There were isolated events during the last half of the 20th century where the federal government recognized land rights, but these did not have the far-reaching implications of the Mabo decision. Eddie Mabo was a member of the Meriam people residing on the Murray (Mer) Islands annexed to Queensland in 1879. Mabo and others had indisputably farmed land on individual plots and fought for ownership of their land. Central to the Aborigines’ claim was to contend that the Crown’s annexation did not extinguish the rights of Aboriginal people. In 1992, the High Court of Australia ruled that Indigenous title to land had survived British colonization. In the wake of the Mabo decision, the Native Title Act of 1993 was passed, maintaining that the Crown did not have ownership of all land acquired during European settlement and that prior interest of Indigenous people could still survive. Although the act was a radical departure from the prior position, it did stipulate that Indigenous owners must live by the laws and customs of their clan and could not sell the land to people external to the clan. Earlier in 1967, Australian citizenship and voting rights were extended to the Indigenous people, allowing them access to welfare and unemployment benefits. It would be misleading to view Aboriginal people as passive, either during colonial days or during more contemporary times, with respect to their position in Australia. They have taken active part in efforts to secure their rights.
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five years after the group organized in California in the United States. This came at a time when Indigenous adults had a 7% unemployment rate (as of the 1966 census) when the nation enjoyed full employment. There were places in Australia where an Aborigine would not be served in retail shops or allowed to dine in restaurants. Although this discrimination did not enjoy the legal support found in the Jim Crow South in the United States, White Australian attitude toward Aborigines at times served to enforce social distance. The writings of Black Nationalists from the United States enjoyed a sympathetic audience among activists in the Australian Aborigine community, but the differences were significant and remain so today. One similarity was the call for Aborigines to have more say and leadership in those services for which they were the major clients. Some activists found greater parallels in the United States with the American Indians and the Maori and saw their position as being a people dispossessed and colonized. Aboriginal people have initiated several strategies to fight for their right to land, including going on strike. Aboriginal people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia went on strike in 1946. There was the Gurindji walk-off from Wave Hill Station of New South Wales in 1966. In 1975, the federal government granted the Gurindji leasehold on a small portion of land, a significant symbolic gesture that included the prime minister funneling a trickle of dirt into the hand of the leader of the Gurindji. Urban-based Indigenous people joined the land rights movement by establishing a “Tent Embassy” on the grounds of what was the Parliament House in Canberra. The Tend Embassy, established in January 1972, drew international attention to the Aboriginal land rights movement and gave the world its first view of the Aboriginal flag. A striking black, yellow, and red symbol of people, their land, and hope, the colors of the Aboriginal flag are used as designators of Aboriginality in jewelry and other forms of expression by Aboriginal people who see their struggle for identity rights as second only to their struggle for land rights.
Protest Movements In many parts of the world, the civil rights and Black Panther movements had an impact on people of color. Australia was no exception. For example, by 1971 the Australian Black Panther Party was first formed, just
Contemporary Society In 2001, the estimated Indigenous population was 458,000 or approximately 2.4% of Australia’s total population. Given their more rural lifestyles, accurate
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counts of Indigenous people are difficult. Yet it does appear that the population is growing faster than the general population due to modest improvement in health conditions and increasing willingness of people to be identified as Indigenous on census forms. By 2009, this population is expected to grow to approximately 528,600. Reflecting a shorter life expectancy by 17 years, the Indigenous people have a median age much lower than that of the non-Indigenous population (20.5 vs. 36.1 years). Indigenous people are much more likely to live in rural or remote areas of Australia. In 2001, roughly one in four Indigenous Australians lived in remote areas compared with only one in fifty non-Indigenous Australians. Health and social conditions for Indigenous people are problematic at best. A 2002 government study found that 83% experienced a “life stressor” (e.g., death of a family member or close friend, serious illness or disability, unemployment), compared with 57% among nonIndigenous people. Although studies conducted since 2000 generally show the health of Indigenous people to be improving, health indicators generally trail those of the general population across the board. Rates of infant mortality, hospitalization, and disability are significantly higher for Indigenous people. Reported incomes show that 20% of non-Indigenous people age 18 years or older were low income, compared with 37% of Indigenous people and an even greater proportion (48%) living in remote areas. Unemployment levels and reports of financial stress follow a similar pattern. Overall, the proportion of Indigenous people completing non-school qualifications (i.e., not graduation certificate, diploma, or bachelor’s degree or above) gradually increased to 26% by 2002. This compares with 50% of non-Indigenous people, with obvious social implications for future employment prospects. As with Indigenous people in other parts of the world, the degree of assimilation varies dramatically among the Indigenous population of Australia. A 2002 government study found that two-thirds of the Indigenous people reported attending relevant cultural events during the previous year. More than half of those reporting identified with a clan or a tribal or language group. Finally, one in eight used an Indigenous language as his or her primary language at home. Although older people show more modest levels of assimilation, the differences are not that striking. For example, 26.1% of those age 55 years or older speak
an Indigenous language, compared with 18.2% of those between 15 and 24 years of age. Today, Indigenous people take a mixed approach to displaying their culture and lifestyle to outsiders. In urban areas, cultural centers such as the Koorie Heritage Trust Cultural Centre in Melbourne provide insight into the history and culture of the Indigenous people of the region. Tours into areas inhabited by Indigenous people operate within a range from those wholly owned by local Aboriginal people to those managed by outside commercial tours that are at best tolerated by Aboriginal people. Just in the current generation, the general public has begun to recognize the sanctity to the Aboriginal people of certain areas of Australia such as Ayers Rock (now called Uluru) in central Australia. The arts and crafts provide a source of income for some Indigenous people, but issues of nonauthentic mass-produced goods reduce the potential impact. Comparable to academic institutions in other former colonial countries, Indigenous Studies has become more common in Australian institutions of higher education. Still developing contentious issues of coverage, relationship to traditional disciplines such as anthropology, and the role of non-professionally trained teachers confront these growing programs. Common to these programs is a commitment to Indigenous people first and not to treat them as merely academic subject matter. Perhaps more challenging has been for Indigenous programs to not be limited to typical Western systems of thought and to embrace Indigenous knowledge, culture, and life experiences. Australian identity for more than 120 years has been rather straightforward as Anglo-Celtic in origin or simply “English.” The White Australian image since World War II was modified to recognize the immigration from Asia. Now in the 21st century, there is a gradual willingness to recognize Indigenous Australians as a central part of Australian culture, but they remain marginalized economically and socially. Indigenous people individually have received national recognition. Among the notables are actor and television host Ernie Dingo, Olympic medalist Cathy Freeman, tennis professional Evonne Goolagong Cawley, and political activist Noel Pearson. Richard T. Schaefer See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Australia; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Brazil; Canada, First Nations; Civil Rights Movement; Colonialism; Latin America,
Authoritarian Personality
Indigenous People; Marginalization; Native Americans; Racialization
Further Readings
Anderson, Warwick. 2003. The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia. New York: Perseus Books. Attwood, Bain. 2003. Rights for Aborigines. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Davison, Craig A. 1998. “Native Land Rights in Australia.” Business Ethics: A European Review 7(1):12–16. Horton, David R., ed. 1994. The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Canberra, Australia: Aboriginal Studies Press. Lothcan, Kathy. 2005. “Seizing the Time: Australian Aborigines and the Influence of the Black Panther Party, 1969–1972.” Journal of Black Studies 35:179–200. Nakata, Morton. 2006. “Australian Indigenous Studies: A Question on Discipline.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 17:265–275.
Web Sites
Australian Bureau of Statistics: http://www.abs.gov.au
AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY The term authoritarian personality was introduced by Theodor W. Adorno and colleagues in 1950 following the publication of The Authoritarian Personality, one of a series of studies in prejudice and discrimination conducted by Adorno and Else Frenkel-Brunswik (both exiles to the United States from the specter of Nazism in Europe) along with R. Nevitt Sanford and Daniel J. Levinson (both members of the Berkeley Public Opinion Study research group located at the University of California). This was an interdisciplinary psychosocial inquiry that systematically studied the mechanisms of domination and the propensity toward authoritarianism in the United States. This entry looks at the concept and its impact on issues of race and ethnicity.
Describing the Study An authoritarian personality was described as an individual who unquestioningly conforms to social norms and is prone to stereotyping, emotional coldness,
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identification with power, and general destructiveness. The variable authoritarianism was investigated, and the attitudinal components made up the “F scale”—a personality structure rendering a person “receptive to antidemocratic propaganda.” Although the focus of the study was a type of personality related to “various manifestations of prejudice,” the authors stressed the need to focus on both the social and psychological structures and processes involved in the mechanisms of domination because “these are the products of the total organization of society.” The study involved the development of a questionnaire (2,099 respondents living in California), followup interviews, observations, and subsequent analysis that uncovered inclinations toward authoritarianism— belief in a system where some people control while others are controlled and involving domination and submission; members of in-groups hold negative attitudes about out-groups such as seeing them as less deserving or less human than themselves. The research team devised a set of interpretive techniques that included a series of scales by which a cluster or constellation of related attitudes could be measured— A-S, anti-Semitism; E, ethnocentrism; PEC, political, economic, conservatism; F, fascism. The F scale, or “Implicit Antidemocratic Trends” scale, was made up of the following variables. Conventionalism: A rigid adherence to conventional middle-class values Authoritarian submission: A submissive uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group Authoritarian aggression: A tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish, people who violate conventional values Anti-intraception: An opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded Superstition and stereotypy: The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories Power and “toughness”: Preoccupation with the dominance–submission, strong–weak, leader–follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis on the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness Destructiveness and cynicism: A generalized hostility; vilification of the human
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Projectivity: The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outward of unconscious emotional impulses
in relation to the nature and function of ideology and the conditions of late capitalism explored through socioeconomic and cultural analysis.
Sex: Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on”
In The Authoritarian Personality, psychoanalytic categories were used to interpret the results. The major hypothesis was that the political, economic, and social convictions of an individual often form a broad or coherent pattern that is, in turn, an expression of deeper lying trends in the individual’s personality. The study disclosed a high degree of anti-Semitic prejudice and a significant number of people who scored high on the scale that measured authoritarian potential in individuals. The study suggests that the knowledge gained through the study could prove to be useful in combating the political–social trend of fascism and that action research/education might prevent a repetition of the European experience.
Social Context The study took place under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee, which hired Max Horkheimer to be the director of the Department of Scientific Research and is clearly linked to the earlier work of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and its reception of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. Indeed, the antecedents of the research are located in the work of Freud, Horkheimer, Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin and their concerns with freedom, anti-Semitism, and how the ideals of the Enlightenment (reason, progress, and liberation) could turn into their opposite in repression, manipulation, and unfreedom. This marked the paradoxical nature of modernization/modernity. The concept of authoritarianism was initially explored by Fromm in Politics and Psychoanalysis (1931) to explain how attitudes can be mobilized to support political movements such as Nazism. The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research subsequently conducted a series of works that explored authoritarianism, enlightenment (modernity/modernization), and fascism. Fromm’s Studies in Authority and the Family and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “Limits of AntiSemitism,” published in Dialectic of Enlightenment, are two examples. The influence of Marx is also apparent in Adorno’s analysis in The Authoritarian Personality, specifically
Contemporary Relevance In The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno and colleagues draw links between anti-Semitism and totalitarian thinking, arguing for analysis that looks for explanations at the level of the social sphere as well as the psyche. Adorno’s work was dedicated to unmasking the false, that is, seeking the truth in life’s fictions and working against the forces of totalitarianism that include prejudice, racism, and “othering.” In Minima Moralia, Adorno described how through a chance conversation on a train a person might consent to statements that ultimately are abhorrent to him or her. As one eminent scholar told us, the false appearance of agreement is enough to undermine truth. Adorno raised unsettling questions about contemporary culture; for example, how deeply do authoritarianism currents run in advanced pluralistic cultures? Examples that can be used to illustrate authoritarian tendencies can be found in studies of obedience to authority in experiments by Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram. Despite critiques of The Authoritarian Personality that claimed the end of authoritarianism and challenged the methodological basis of the study, research into prejudice and authoritarianism continues, leading to analysis that seeks to counter authoritarian tendencies. For many scholars, The Authoritarian Personality still matters and authoritarianism is better described in terms of attitudes than in terms of personality, thereby enabling contemporary studies of the far right to be conducted alongside measures for their reduction. Adorno and colleagues’ central thesis remains relevant, namely that advanced industrial society encourages the formation of authoritarian individuals, who may become fascists and form fascist organizations. For example, see current studies in pseudoconservatism, far right groups (e.g., the British National Party [BNP] in the United Kingdom), security, terrorism, and the treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. An example of research and action designed to counter such trends can be found in the development of a global network focusing on Human Dignity and
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Humiliation Studies (HDHS), which meets at Columbia University in New York City once a year to report and reflect on research that examines humiliation, human dignity, conflict and peace, immigration and migration (both forced and free), and the need for growth-fostering social communities and relationships to interrupt pathways of violence so as to build equality and human dignity and to counter negative social forces such as the impact of authoritarianism, humiliation, instrumental reason, racism, sexism, and identity thinking. Other recent studies focus on explanations that concentrate on group processes rather than individual characteristics drawing on studies by Milgram, Zimbardo, and Michael Billig by way of examples. Maggie O’Neill
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Milgram, Stanley. 1963. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67:371–378. O’Neill, Maggie, ed. 1999. Adorno, Culture, and Feminism. London: Sage. Reicher, Stephen and S. Alexander Haslam. 2006. “Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny: The BBC Prison Study.” British Journal of Social Psychology 45:1–40. Roiser, Martin and Carla Willig. 2002. “The Strange Death of the Authoritarian Personality: 50 Years of Psychological and Political Debate.” History of the Human Sciences 15(4):71–96. Zimbardo, Philip G., Christina Maslach, and Craig Haney. 1999. “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences.” Pp. 193–237 in Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, edited by T. Blass. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
See also American Jewish Committee; Anti-Semitism; Labeling; Prejudice; Stereotypes Further Readings
Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Norton. Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. 1995. Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming. London: Verso. Adorno, Theodor W. 1996. Minima Moralia, translated by E. F. N. Jephcott. London: Verso. Billig, Michael. 1978. Fascists: A Social Psychological View of the National Front. London: Academic Press. Bronner, Stephen Eric and Douglas M. Kellner, eds. 1989. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. New York: Routledge. Christie, Richard and Marie Jahoda, eds. 1954. Studies in the Scope and Method of the Authoritarian Personality. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Haney, Craig, W. Curtis Banks, and Philip G. Zimbardo. 1973. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1:69–97. Haney, Craig and Philip G. Zimbardo. 1976. “Social Roles and Role-Playing: Observations from the Stanford Prison Study.” Pp. 266–274 in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, 4th ed., edited by E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt. New York: Oxford University Press. Jay, Martin. 1984. Adorno. London: Fontana. Lindner, Evelin. 2006. Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict. Westport, CT: Praeger.
AZTLÁN Aztlán refers to the land of origin of the Nahuatlspeaking Mexica of Mexico, who are commonly, but incorrectly, known as Aztecs. Nahuatl legends relate that seven tribes, including the Mexica, lived in Chicomoztoc (“the place of the seven caves”). These tribes subsequently left the caves and settled somewhere in the region that currently comprises the present-day northern Mexico or U.S. Southwest. The Aubin Codex states that the tyranny of a despotic elite, known as the Azteca Chicomoztoca, forced the Mexica to flee from Aztlán, guided by the spirit of the South, Huitzilopochtli. The Codex describes how this Nahuatl god of war and sun forbade the Mexica from identifying with the Azteca. Ironically, and representing an important theme of conquest, scholars of the 19th century would name the Mexica’s descendants and their civilization Aztec. During the 1960s, Aztlán came to be represented in the material and political culture of young Mexican Americans, as described in this entry. Particularly as Mexican American youth sought to reclaim and reposition their mixed indigenous history, culture, and experiences in relation to the U.S. acquisition of nearly one-third of the landmass of Mexico after the Mexican–American War in 1848, Aztlán served a powerful metaphorical role in the creation of a cohesive racial, cultural, and political identity for Mexican Americans. Such an identity was essential for many
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Spanish-surnamed individuals who, as result of racial/ethnic discrimination, had been relegated to second-class citizenship, social marginalization, and the underclass during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
The Denver Meeting The importance of Aztlán to the civil rights and identity struggles of Mexican Americans crystallized in March 1969 in Denver, Colorado, where Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales convened the First National Youth and Liberation Conference. Gonzales had become the ideological leader for many Chicano youth with the publication of his epic and critical poem, Yo Soy Joaquin. Approximately 1,500 young people from throughout the United States attended the conference held at the headquarters of Gonzales’s political organization, the Crusade for Justice, to discuss common issues of social injustice and racial discrimination experienced by a wide array of youth in their communities. After much debate and discussion, the conference formulated a philosophy of cultural nationalism, calling for all Mexican Americans to unite under the banner of the term Chicano and calling for selfdetermination in all spheres of life. Most important, the participants embraced the concept of Aztlán to situate their program. By referencing their social and political identity in relation to the indigenous homeland of the Mexica empire, which became subjected to Spanish and (later) American expansion, Aztlán provided an image by which Chicanos/as could resolve the racial tensions of their mestizo multiracial and multicultural identities. Simply, it was an effort to reject whiteness and the long-standing ethnocentric view in the Mexican American community; beyond that, being indigenous meant being less than European or American. All of these sentiments were captured in a document drafted by the conference participants—El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. The Chicano poet Alurista penned the Preamble to this Mexican American Declaration of Independence: In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal “Gringo” invasion of our territories, We, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern
land of Aztlán, from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth. . . . We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those that plant the seed, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze continent.
Aztlán accordingly served to identify precisely the connection between Mexican Americans’ distinct mixed-race identity and a centuries-long struggle for human rights and cultural survival in the U.S. Southwest. A month later, many of the same attendees of the National Youth Liberation Conference met at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and organized student organizations under the name Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MECHA). Moreover, Aztlán functioned as the foundation by which transnationalism came to be articulated by many Mexican American students and activists both during and after the height of the Chicano movement during the early 1970s. Highlighting the interdependency of racial formations during a period when Black, Asian, American Indian, and other Third World activists each developed comprehensive visions of sovereignty, the nationalism embodied in the concept of Aztlán became the basis to organize Chicanos in the worldwide struggle against racism and systemic exploitation. Indeed, Aztlán represented the ability of a colonized people to distribute economic resources equitably and fairly, to provide meaningful political access, and to preserve the cultural character of Chicanos/as.
Long-Term Impact During the years since its emergence in the Chicano movement, the concept of Aztlán has served to animate Chicano political mobilization across the political spectrum—from the class-based politics of Centro de Accion Social Autonomo (CASA) to the more mainstream National Council of La Raza. In turn, the concept of Aztlán and its use by Chicanos has drawn intense and often raucous criticism for being racist and exclusionary and for contributing to the “Balkanization” of the United States. Nevertheless, the name is a distinct product of a particular historical moment by which Mexican Americans during the 1960s and 1970s reimagined and recentered their
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political and social identities as a mixed-race people who had long been part the history of conquest, control, and resistance in the Americas. Tom I. Romero II See also Alamo, The; Chicano Movement; Identity Politics; Internal Colonialism; La Raza; Mexican Americans
Further Readings
Anaya, Rodofo, ed. 1993. Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
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Barrera, Mario. 1990. Beyond Aztlán: Ethnic Autonomy in Comparative Perspective. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Gonzales, Rodolfo. 2001. Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. 2006. North to Aztlán: A History of Mexican Americans in the United States. Whelling, IL: Harlan Davidson. Navarro, Armando. 2004. Mexicano Political Experience in Occupied Aztlán: Struggles and Change. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
B repatriation of liberated Blacks. In 1815, Paul Cuffe successfully took nine families consisting of thirtyeight people to Sierra Leone. Such voyages encouraged many free Black and White abolitionists to do the same. Drawing on the success of the Fourah Bay settlement and Cuffe’s inspirational voyage, the American Colonization Society (ACS) (formally named “The American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States”) was established in 1816. Its aim was to have liberated Blacks colonize the western coast of Africa. Three groups supported the ACS. First, there were those who believed that resettlement was the only means by which Blacks could obtain a modicum of freedom and justice. Others were motivated by the goal of spreading Christianity to what they saw as “savage” Africa. The third group— and the source of most ACS support—were southern planters and slaveowners who grew fearful of the free Black population. Slaveowners wanted free Blacks removed from the nation for fear that they might ignite an insurrection among slaves. Therefore, many slaveowners saw repatriation as the only means of ridding themselves of this “dangerous” group, especially given the success of the Haitian revolution.
BACK TO AFRICA MOVEMENT The so-called Back to Africa movements—projects designed to repatriate people of African descent, willingly and unwillingly, to West Africa and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries—are often omitted from accounts of U.S. history. Yet these movements played an important part in the history of Black Nationalism and civil rights in the United States. Championed by both Whites and Blacks, Black emigration from the United States to Africa reached its apex with the creation of Liberia. This entry reviews the history of the movement and its impact.
Historical Origin The idea of repatriating to Africa predates the American Revolution. Virtually every national leader from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln held the conviction that Blacks and Whites could not coexist as free and equal citizens. As a result, these men encouraged emigration, as did James Madison, Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice Bushrod Washington, and even Harriet Beecher Stowe. Other advocates included Martin Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, Alexander Crummell, and Marcus Garvey. Sending liberated Blacks to Africa gained momentum after the successful settlement at Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone, in 1787, by the British Crown. There, several hundred liberated slaves were settled. Later, New Englander Paul Cuffe, a successful Black shipper, inquired about conditions in Sierra Leone and established organizations in the United States to assist in the
Sailing for Sierra Leone In 1820, the ACS launched the brig Elizabeth, bound for the Grain Coast with eighty-eight African American emigrants. The Elizabeth landed at Sherbro Island in Sierra Leone. Soon thereafter, about a quarter of the would-be colonists died of vector-born diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever. Led by Elijah Johnson, the survivors retreated to Freetown, 125
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Sierra Leone. Despite the initial failure, the ACS pushed forth and sailed a second group in 1821. Escorted by the U.S.S. Alligator, the Augusta landed in 1821 at Cape Mesurado, a site that was selected by a young American lieutenant named Matthew Perry. After negotiations with indigenous African chiefs— who reluctantly agreed to sell their land—the ACS agents and settlers purchased sixty miles of land along the coast for U.S. $300. In April 1822, the first settlement was established, but not without resistance from the native population. Immediately following the signing of the contract with indigenous chiefs, local natives pushed the settlers back to an island in the Mesurado Lagoon called Providence Island. On November 11, 1822, the indigenous population attacked the settler community again, using firearms acquired from Spanish and Cuban slaveowners. Under the leadership of Jehudi Ashmun, the settlers regrouped with the help of British and U.S. forces and claimed a victory over the indigenous population. The settlement came to be known as “Monrovia,” after U.S. president James Monroe, and the colony took on the name “Liberia,” from the Latin adjective liber, meaning “free.” Hence, all settlers became known as “Americo-Liberians.”
Building the Liberian Colony Within months, the ACS began to purchase more land along the coast, while strongly encouraging Black emigration from the United States. Over the next decade, state colonization societies (e.g., Maryland Colonization Society and Mississippi Colonization Society) continued to sponsor the emigration of manumitted Blacks from America to Liberia. Between 1822 and 1867, the colony grew to approximately 19,000 Americo-Liberians. In fact, early Black Nationalists like Henry McNeal Turner and Henry Highland Garnet supported the ACS. Turner saw emigration as a means to Christianize Africans, a view that was later strengthened after visiting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa in the 1890s. The relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous population worsened as the settler populations grew and as time passed, for the settlers saw themselves not as descendants of Africans, but as Americans. Despite their subordinated role in the New World, many identified with the world that had refused them, and Liberia was simply an asylum from that subordination. Having no psychological
attachment to Africa, the settlers treated the indigenous population as savages and barbarians. To the AmericoLiberian population, they were uncivilized. The settlers thus began to establish a castelike system, essentially ethnic apartheid. In 1838, the Americo-Liberian elite and the ACS declared Liberia a commonwealth, which was to be overseen by the U.S. military, and in 1839, they drafted a constitution based on the U.S. Constitution. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, governor of Liberia and first governor and president of partial African parentage, later convinced the settlers that Liberia was better off breaking ties with the ACS and declaring its independence. In Liberia, with limited aid from the United States, the Americo-Liberians built churches, schools, and colleges; maintained stable political parties; managed to assimilate Africans liberated from slave ships by the U.S. Navy; and established a constitutional republic in 1847, thus claiming jurisdiction over approximately 1 million indigenous people who already occupied the area. Ironically, the survival of their nation made an important though often overlooked contribution to Black pride and hope in the United States. For the first 2 decades, a small group of “mulattoes” ruled the new nation, but in the second half of the 19th century, the Americo-Liberian community became politically divided. The division led to the establishment of two political parties: the Republicans and the True Whig Party (TWP). In 1870, the darker-skinned True Whig Party ousted the lighter-skinned Republicans and ruled until 1980. In other words, the descendants of the early African American settlers monopolized the government—which was controlled by the governing TWP—and economy for well over a century until the overthrow of the First Republic by military coup in 1980, after which civil strife was commonplace.
Subsequent Support Although no other movement had the success of the ACS, other individuals and organizations strongly advocated for the mass emigration of African Americans to Africa. Initially against repatriation, Black Nationalist Martin Delany, in his book The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852), encouraged emigration. Delany was also active in emigration conferences throughout the 1850s and managed to
Baldwin, James (1924–1987)
create a treaty to settle liberated Blacks in present-day Nigeria, an agreement that eventually failed. Another noteworthy advocate of emigration was Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Garvey championed colonization in the 20th century and compared emigration to Liberia to the Jewish recovery of Palestine. Garvey popularized the slogans “Back to Africa” and “Africa for Africans.” However, unlike those before him, Garvey failed in sustaining and creating a movement that helped repatriate people of African descent to Africa. Influenced by Garvey, Rastafarians have also envisioned a return to Africa. Paul Khalil Saucier See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Abolitionism: The People; African Americans, Migration of; Black Conservatives; Black Nationalism; Slavery
Further Readings
Moses, Wilson. 1998. Liberian Dreams: Back to Africa Narratives from the 1850s. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Van Deburg, William. 1997. Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan. New York: New York University Press. Werner, Emma and Margaret Bacon, eds. 2005. Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates on the Colonization Movement in America, 1848–1880. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
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as a testament to an artist’s generative struggle to integrate vision and identity.
Family Background and Early Influences James Baldwin was born in a Harlem hospital in 1924, son of the unmarried Berdis Jones. After her marriage to David Baldwin and the subsequent birth of eight siblings, James and his family continued to live in New York City, and the children attended its public schools. Baldwin’s love of solitary reading and his first writing efforts—the tender shoots of a major literary talent—appeared during his Harlem childhood. As a Baldwin son, he made his home in his family’s apartment; as a son of the human social world, he found a home in the public library on 135th Street. Baldwin’s stepfather worked as a laborer and a preacher, and his influence on young James was powerful and decidedly ambiguous. Many of Baldwin’s literary works are shaped by the fractious, fear-filled love between them. His own family and early experiences are inextricable in his prose from their symbolic counterpoints in the larger society. Thus, suffering and difficulty linked to his stepfather were transmuted into the pain of never quite belonging in the world. The thematic power of his actual and symbolic “illegitimacy” runs through many of his major works, particularly Go Tell It on the Mountain, Nobody Knows My Name, and No Name in the Street.
Formation of Artistic Identity
BALDWIN, JAMES (1924–1987) One of the preeminent African American novelists, essayists, and short-story writers of the 20th century, James Baldwin brought the struggle of race and identity to the forefront of all his fictional work. The power of his stories and the characters inhabiting them lies in their symbolic reflection of U.S. social and political realities. His stories bring the midcentury racial and sexual political milieu to light without sacrificing the ambiguity and humanity of the individual characters. The impact of his work on American letters and on the politics of human liberation was as singular as the struggling, incontrovertibly unique characters he created. Influenced by some of the great writers of his time and place, Baldwin’s oeuvre stands
James Baldwin faced a host of terrifying challenges as he grew into his relationship with the larger human world. His experience as the somewhat-outcast son in the Baldwin family awakened in him a thirst for belonging that was never to be satisfied, even as it galvanized the emotional and artistic energy sustaining him and driving his work forward. He began to preach the Christian gospel as an adolescent, bringing the conflict with his stepfather to a contest on more or less equal footing (even as the senior Baldwin was losing his grip on sanity) and developing his signature facility with speech and oral witnessing. Around the same time, several school-based mentors, both White and Black, provided extremely significant guidance and support to young James (Jimmy) and were pivotal elements fostering his intellectual and artistic development. From these mentors,
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Baldwin learned a love for language in the form of theater, classic drama, and fiction. A formative experiential influence on his art and his confidence in being an artist was an Orson Welles Works Progress Administration (WPA) production of Macbeth with an all-Black cast. His longing, like that of his literary model, Henry James, to be recognized as a playwright owes much to that early encounter with drama. Indeed, in the final weeks of his life, Baldwin labored over revisions to his play, The Welcome Table. Between Macbeth and The Welcome Table, Baldwin was to find a thicket of success and betrayal only partly assuaged by his self-imposed exile in France beginning in the late 1940s.
Struggle in the Black Diaspora Exile, social and physical, provides the dominant motif for Baldwin’s life and literary work. His vision adamantly rejected the compartmentalizing of personal and political phenomena, and, in this as in other important aspects of human liberation, he represented the avant-garde. The integration of warring elements in the human predicament formed the theme for many of his best works, published just after the Paris period: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955), and Giovanni’s Room (1956). Sometimes—for example, during the burgeoning of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s—Baldwin’s incisive forward-thinking personal and social politics opened him up to the ridicule and disapprobation of young Black intellectual and political leaders. Richard Wright, at first a mentor to the young expatriate, publicly disavowed Baldwin after James questioned the use of literature for purely political ends. As his work and words make clear, the nature of art is a political and existential challenge to the status quo. Later, after his return from Paris, Baldwin’s open homosexuality became the focus of a series of public efforts by young Black political and intellectual leaders to cut him out of Black American culture. Somewhat daunted, yet relatively unscathed, Baldwin published important work during this period, such as The Fire Next Time (1963), Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), and a screenplay (unfilmed) about Malcolm X.
Artistic and Political Legacy In both quality and number, the published works of James Baldwin are on a par with many major literary
figures. They exist neither solely in the individual domain nor in the political world, but display a rare, integrative vision of life and literature. Baldwin’s work has contributed greatly to the literature of human liberation—for gays, Blacks, women, and all humans oppressed by the negative power of labels and divisive identities. Many contemporary Black literati, such as Toni Morrison, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Maya Angelou, knew Baldwin, and credit his work with the formation of their own artistic perspective. His legacy emerges clearly in the work of new generations of Black writers, poets, and intellectuals. In the last years of his life, Baldwin gave interviews and continued writing (The Evidence of Things Not Seen, 1985; The Fire This Time, 1985; Gypsies and Other Poems, 1987; and a draft of The Welcome Table). He died of cancer at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1987. Corinne Lally Benedetto See also African Americans; African American Studies; Black Intellectuals; Black Power; Diaspora; Harlem; Harlem Renaissance; Malcolm X
Further Readings
Baldwin, James. 1953. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Knopf. Baldwin, James. 1955. Notes of a Native Son. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1992. “The Fire Last Time: What James Baldwin Can and Can’t Teach America.” New Republic 206(22):37–42. Leeming, David. 1994. James Baldwin: A Biography. New York: Knopf. McBride, Dwight A. 1999. James Baldwin NOW. New York: New York University Press.
BALKANS The term Balkan is a relatively recent designation for the peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean east of Italy and the nations that are in that geographic region. The Balkans are historically home to people of several ethnic groups, and these ethnic divisions have rarely been reflected in the national boundaries that have fluctuated over the last century. The result has been a penchant for conflict that has given a meaning to balkanization that has nothing to do with geography.
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This entry looks at the development of the term and the history of the region, focusing on its ethnic conflict.
Developing the Term The Turkish word Balkan denotes “wooded mountain.” The term entered the literature in the beginning of the 19th century, first used by the German geographer August Zeune (1809) to describe the countries south of the Old Mountain in Bulgaria. Zeune’s intention was to name the southeastern part of the European landmass according to the main mountain systems, analogous to the Pyrenean and Apennine peninsulas. The geographical peculiarity of the Balkan peninsula is the nonexistence of a mountainous demarcation line dividing it from the rest of Europe on its northern part. Given the negative political connotation that the term later obtained, that geographical fact led to ideologically motivated debates among the countries of the region about who does and does not belong to the Balkan Peninsula. From the beginnings of its usage, the term had a broader geopolitical meaning in addition to the narrow geographical one. Initially, the term was used for the territories directly or indirectly under the control or influence of the Ottoman Empire. Today, the term is used in a historical and political sense to indicate the territories of the modern countries of Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria,
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Greece, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo in the southwest part of Serbia along the Albanian border, and the European part of Turkey. Depending on how the northern demarcation line is drawn, many authors also designate Croatia and Slovenia as being in the Balkan region. The evolution of the negative connotation of the Balkans in the modern political discourse can be connected with the period of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The competition among the great powers (mainly Russia and Austria-Hungary) to replace the declining Ottomans, combined with national revolutions, created social and geopolitical instability. Terms like the eastern question, powder keg of Europe, and tinderbox entered the vocabulary of international politics. In a period characterized by general tranquility in the rest of Europe, the Balkan Peninsula was a scene of continuous conflicts through the 19th century. The Balkan wars (1912, 1913) and World War I definitively pushed the perception of the Balkans as being imbued with political, social, cultural, and ideological overtones, and Balkan became increasingly used as a pejorative term. This period also gave birth to the concept of balkanization, denoting political and territorial fragmentation within the context of ethnic heterogeneity and territorial and border disputes. The term Balkan started to signify the disintegration of viable nation-states and the reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, and the barbarian. The situation in the Baltic region began to be called the “Northern Balkans,” and the “Balkanization of Africa” was used as a description of the African decolonization after World War II. These Balkan stereotypes were reinvigorated by the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, which are often termed Balkan wars despite the fact they were confined to the former Yugoslav republics. The people in the region also internalize the “Balkan” stereotype. The “Balkanist” rhetoric was utilized to legitimize Croatia’s quest for independence as a necessary emancipation from its “Balkan burden.” Slovenians emphasize in their self-description that they do not belong and never have belonged to “the Balkans.”
Ethnic Composition Geography and history contributed to the ethnically heterogeneous nature of the Balkan area. The mountains, by isolating peoples and encouraging localism, hindered the development of larger and unified states. The mountainous terrain also allowed minority
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peoples to take refuge to escape conquerors and thereby retain their identities rather than be assimilated. Examples include the retreat of Illyrians and Dacians into the mountains at the time of the Slavic invasions (7th century) and their later reemergence as Albanians and Vlachs. In the period before the first political unification of the region under the Roman Empire, the main ethnic groups were Illyrians, Thracians, and Dacians in the north and Greeks in the south. Starting from the 2nd century BC, Romans penetrated the peninsula and subdued the Illyrians. The result was the romanization of the indigenous populations but also the settlement of large numbers of Roman veterans. A large number of other peoples had contributed to the ethnic mixture of the region before the later Slavic penetration. Celts, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepids raided and settled the region on their own or as Roman federate troops. In the towns, merchants, officials, and soldiers included Italians, Germans, Greeks, Armenians, and eastern people from Anatolia, Egypt, and Syria. In the broader cultural sense, the Balkans became the region between Old Rome and New Rome (Byzantium) and between Latin and Greek. The Slavic Invasio ons
The Slavic invasions in the 6th and 7th centuries produced a deep and long-lasting change of the ethnic composition of the Balkans. Large-scale Slavic settlement began in the late 570s and early 580s. The Slavic penetration pushed back the Greek influence. Slavs poured down to the tip of the Peloponnesus in Greece. Except for certain coastal cities and some mountainous regions, the Byzantine Empire was left only with most of Thrace, a few walled cities along the Dalmatian and Greek coasts, and many islands. Most of the Balkans region was settled by Slavs of two types (excluding the smaller groups of Slavic Slovenes and Turkic Avars in the western Balkans). Each of these two main Slavic groups was to be named for a second conquering group, which appeared later in the 7th century. The first group (modern Bulgarians and Macedonians), whose Slavic component according to some historians is derived from the old ethnic group called Antes (probably the Slavic version of a name of Iranian origin), was in the late 7th century conquered by the Turkic Bulgars. The Slavs eventually assimilated them, but the Bulgars’ name survived. The second group is made up of Slavs
inhabiting the rest of the Balkan Peninsula. These Slavs came to be dominated by two different but similar tribal peoples, called Serbs and Croats, in the second quarter of the 7th century. The military elite of true Serbs and Croats provided the new names for most of these Slavs. Ethnicity y and Relig gion
The Balkan Peninsula in the Middle Ages was culturally under two main influences. On the eastern side was the Byzantine Empire, which influenced the societies and cultures of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania. On the western side—that is, Slovenia, Croatia, and to a large extent Bosnia and Herzegovina— the influences emanated from Italy, Austria, and Hungary. The most visible dividing line emerging from this division is the religious one between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. These cultural influences, which were combined with the different patterns of mixture between the Slavic and indigenous ethnic components, were decisive in the creation of the ethnic map of the peninsula. In the 15th century, the penetration of the Ottomans brought deep political, religious, and ethnic changes. The conversion to Islam of some segments of the population contributed to the increase of the ethnic heterogeneity of the region; these groups include the contemporary Bosnian Muslims today, called Bosniaks, along with Albanians and Pomaks in Bulgaria, Macedonia, or Greece.
The Rise of Nationalism The 19th century was a time of nationalist awakening and nationalist revolutions oriented toward the establishment of independent nation-states carved up from the territories of the empire. Where the struggle had clearly defined targets (Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empires), the “nation” in the name of which the struggle was fought was very far from clear. Boundaries and identities in the Balkans were not clearly delineated. Within the empire’s boundaries, the different nationalities had moved freely. The functional specialization of some ethnic groups created ethnic mixtures with no clear territorial separation. For example, the commercial predominance of the Greeks, the Jews, and the Armenians gave some of the towns of Bulgaria and Macedonia a Greek character, while the countryside was overwhelmingly Slavic. The great
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majority of the Balkan peoples lived as impoverished peasants in small, isolated villages. They were in general illiterate and spoke local dialects. The feeling of belonging to the larger units was not clearly defined except in the religious community. The French Revolution and the later influence of German Romanticism gave the Balkan people an ideology supporting revolt; the intelligentsia developed a clear concept of “the nation.” The problem was that these abstract theoretical ideas did not correspond to the much more mixed social reality. The criteria used to determine the border areas in this complicated situation were language and religion. In the literary and cultural revivals that preceded the political and military actions, each national group turned for inspiration to the myths of its own national history: the Greeks to ancient Greece and Byzantium and the Serbs, Croats, and Bulgarians to their medieval states and empires. These various criteria led to the competing claims of nationalist movements in different Balkan nations that determine the politics of the region to this day.
Contest and Conflict Competing claims were made for the territory and for the people’s “souls.” The competition over territory was often based on the fact that boundaries were different in different eras: Nationalist groups, for example, might claim territory for their nation based on the boundaries of their medieval empire at the peak of its expansion. In every nation, there was a feeling of resentment growing out of the contrast between the historical reality and the nationalist dreams of the “Greater” Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia. As the result of migrations, expulsions, and various demographic trends, the historical idea of what was national territory and the demographic reality often do not coincide today. One example of this is Kosovo, the heart of the medieval Serbian state, which today is 90% inhabited by Albanians. Competing claims clashed not only over territory but also over people. National awakening proceeded with different speeds in different parts of the region, and different historical and political circumstances determined different positions for different ethnic groups. That led to a competition for the allegiance of populations who inhabited regions in between groups that had already passed through a “national awakening” period, for example, between Serbs and Croats over Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks); between Serbs, Bulgarians, and
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Greeks over Macedonians; and between the definition of Montenegrins as an independent national group or simply as a branch of the Serbian nation. These competing claims are often combined with a less than just treatment of the different minorities living within the territories of nation-states. The result has been ethnic cleansings, forced assimilation, and simply negation of the existence of some groups. Other examples are frequent “exchanges” of populations between Greece and Turkey (between 1913 and 1926); agreements between Bulgaria and Turkey about the emigration of the Turkish population after World War II and the mass exodus of Turks in 1989; forced assimilation of Turks and Pomaks in Bulgaria from 1984 to 1989; and the negation of the existence of the “Macedonian question” in Bulgaria and Greece. During the disintegration of Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing between Serbs, Croats, Albanians, and Bosniaks occurred in all directions, and as a consequence, the ethnic map of the former Yugoslav states is now significantly changed. After the fall of communism, the attractiveness of the European integration processes played a positive role in checking ethnic tensions. Despite that, many issues with an uncertain future remain, the most outstanding ones being the status of Kosovo; the relationship of Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the Albanian-Macedonian tension in Macedonia. Duško Sekulic´ See Appendix A See also Albanian Americans; Borderlands; Bosnian Americans; Bulgarian Americans; Croatian Americans; Europe; Muslims in Europe; Romanian Americans; Serbian Americans; Slovene Americans
Further Readings
Fine, John V. A. 1993. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Fine, John V. A. 1996. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Glenny, Misha. 1999. The Balkans 1804–1999: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers. London: Granta Books. Poulton, Hugh. 1991. The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict. London: Minority Rights Publications. Roudomentof, Victor. 2001. Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origin of Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
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Stavrianos, Leften S. 1958. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. London: Oxford University Press.
BANGLADESHI AMERICANS The term Bangladeshi American is generally used to refer to individuals of Bangladeshi descent who currently reside in the United States, as either immigrants or citizens. The overwhelming majority of Bangladeshi Americans arrived in this country during the last decade, and thus they are largely first-generation immigrants. Bangladeshi Americans are ethnically Bengalis and speak Bengali. Most adhere to Islam, although there are a small number of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian Bangladeshi Americans. The primary objective of this entry is to briefly present some salient characteristics of Bangladeshi Americans. Kyrgyzstan
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Immigration History Immigration to the United States from the area of British India that constitutes present-day Bangladesh (with an estimated 2007 population of 149 million people) began in 1887, but the numbers were very small until the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which took full effect in 1968. This act eliminated the country of origin as a qualification for obtaining an immigration visa and allowed Asians to immigrate to the United States. Many Bangladeshis who settled in the United States prior to the independence of the country in 1971 fled Bangladesh to avoid political persecution or, in the case of religious minorities, to avoid religious discrimination. This first wave of immigrants was generally composed of professionals, people who were well educated and affluent. During this period, all Bengali Americans were considered either Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans. The second wave of Bangladeshi immigrants to the United States began after independence in 1971. It has been reported that only 154 Bangladeshi immigrants arrived in the United States in 1973. By 1980, there were an estimated 3,500 Bangladeshis in the United States, 200 of whom had already become U.S. citizens. Between 1982 and 1992, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization service legally admitted 28,850 Bangladeshis. Most of the immigrants arriving during the 1970s and 1980s were younger males who were leaving hard economic and political times behind. Overpopulation and widespread poverty were the two primary reasons for emigration from Bangladesh at that time. A third of these immigrants had professional training, and a considerable number had marketable skills. The early immigrants were typically employed in respectable positions in both the public and private sectors. About half of these immigrants were already married when they immigrated, with families awaiting immigration once the spouse was settled. A steady flow of sizable numbers of Bangladeshi immigrants began after the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990. One important component of this act was the introduction of the diversity visa (DV), in what has come to be called the “lottery” visa program. Under this program, the United States allowed more than 6,000 Bangladeshis entry into the country as immigrants every year beginning in the early 1990s. In recent years, this number has been reduced to nearly 4,000. Along with documented immigrants, this flow also brought undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. The number of Bangladeshis entering illegally into the United States decreased remarkably after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Nonetheless, some estimates suggest that more than 50,000 undocumented Bangladeshis are now living in metropolitan New York City alone. Recent immigrants from Bangladesh also include groups of tribal people from
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the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, who are culturally distinct from the Bengalis of Bangladesh; they left Bangladesh to escape repression by the government. In addition, many Bangladeshi students have come to the United States on student visas over the last 2 decades and stayed on after graduation. There are also skilled Bangladeshis who immigrated to the United States indirectly. Many such immigrants first went to the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand for employment or to pursue higher studies and then moved to the United States. Many also came from Bangladesh after working several years in Middle Eastern countries.
The Bangladeshi Community The community of Bangladeshi Americans is small compared with other Asian immigrant groups, and although Bangladeshi Americans have settled in every state, they are predominantly concentrated in large metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago. There is no reliable information regarding the total number of Bangladeshis now living in the United States. Unofficial estimates put this number between 200,000 and 250,000. At least half of Bangladeshi Americans are believed to be residing illegally within this country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 41,280 people identified themselves as being of solely Bangladeshi origin in the 2000 census. Almost half of these selfidentified Bangladeshi Americans are over the age of 25 and have at least a bachelor’s degree, whereas less than 25% of the total U.S. population has achieved this level of education. The reported median family income of Bangladeshi Americans from the 2000 census was $38,146, significantly less than the U.S. average of $50,046 and also less than that of other Asian immigrant communities, such as Indian Americans. Bangladeshi Americans who arrived after 1990 can be classified into two broad groups. Those who came through the DV program are in general less educated and possess fewer skills. Most are employed in lowpaying jobs in restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, and gas stations, and some drive taxis in large cities like New York and Chicago. Many street vendors in New York City are also of Bangladeshi origin. Some own small businesses, such as restaurants, gas stations, motels, or travel agencies. Bangladeshi immigrants who came as students or who came indirectly from other countries are generally
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highly educated and hold professional jobs as engineers, medical doctors, scientists, and university teachers. Bangladeshi immigrants in general are geographically mobile, and most preserve strong ties to Bangladesh. These educated, highly mobile immigrants often become actively involved in local organizations that reflect religious or geographical affiliations in their home country. Bangladeshi Americans are a tightly knit group. Because of their religion, many are linked by stereotype to the larger Muslim community. It appears that religious conservatism has been rising among Muslim Bangladeshi Americans. They are actively involved with the activities of mosques, and a large number of first-generation women immigrants tend to adhere more closely to the Islamic model than to the mainstream American model. Bangladeshi immigrants typically support the U.S. Democratic Party, which more closely reflects their views on the Iraq War. Most Bangladeshi immigrants stay well-informed regarding all issues related to their homeland. Many travel to Bangladesh annually, and most send money to close relatives still living in Bangladesh. In fact, remittances play an important role in the economic development of Bangladesh. Bimal Kanti Paul See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Asian Americans, New York City; Immigrant Communities; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; India; Indian Americans; Pakistani Americans
Further Readings
Gardner, Katy. 1995. Global Migrants, Local View: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Jones, Sydney J. 2006. Bangladeshi Americans. Retrieved from http://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/ Bangladeshi-Americans.html Paul, Bimal K. 2005. “Bangladeshi American Response to the 1998 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA): An Assessment.” The Professional Geographer 57:495–505.
BARRIO Barrios are described as Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, usually in urban centers, in which residents identify as either Hispanic or Latino. The barrio has
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become a symbolic entity where residents form residential patterns marked by segregation and the racialization of Latinos. Stereotypes reinforce the negative perception of U.S.-based barrios, but the realities of modern barrios, along with their recent and future transformations, challenge these stereotypes.
Definition
marked by economic deprivation, include residents who are undocumented, or who reside illegally in the United States. This criterion impacts the services rendered to a community or neighborhood by local, city, state, and national agencies.
Barrio as Symbol and Community
Symbolism Barrios are found throughout Latin America as well as The barrio is a symbolic place. It is symbolic in its within the United States and include residential, comgeographic position in an urban center, usually on the mercial, and industrial properties. William Siembieda periphery of the city limits, suggesting further marand Eduardo Lopez Moreno asserted that the term has ginalization of its residents. The barrio symbolizes become a descriptive category and not a functional struggle, culture, pride, unity, and a sense of commuconcept of daily life. The barrio is identified objecnity. It also becomes a permanent space to celebrate tively, positively, or negatively. When barrios are successes and remedy community failures. operationalized objectively, the focus centers on delimiting geographical census tracts and spatial boundaries, while identifying demographic trends. Ressid den ntss When barrios are operationalized negatively, they are The barrio is a symbolic place of identification, described as deteriorated urban areas occupied by whereby residents may affiliate themselves, first, with impoverished Latinos. their barrio, and, secondarily, with their city, state, Since the barrio is a place of commerce and resiregion, or country. In contemporary urban research, dence, Emmanuelle LeTexier characterized it by residents of the barrio might be labeled as members of demographic, socioeconomic, and political criteria. the underclass, a group marked by low median annual Demographic criteria include those who reside in the barrio. Since the majority of barrio residents are of Latin American origin, most services available to community residents cater to this demographic population. The second criterion of a barrio is based upon socioeconomic factors, usually referring to measures of education, income, and occupation. Although barrios include Latinos from all socioeconomic backgrounds, the majority of Latino communities identified as barrios in the United States tend to include lowincome residents. Low socioeconomic factors result in restricted opportunities, resulting in high unemployment rates, low median household incomes, and a population that according to national decennial census data subsists below the Mariachis in East Los Angeles, California. The barrio is a place of both work national poverty level. and residence. Without work at the end of the day, these Mariachis ponder The third criterion of a barrio is polit- their next move at La Placita in East Los Angeles, California (June 18, 2003). ical. A resident’s immigration status is a East Los Angeles’s population is 98% Latino and is the oldest Latino immigrant highly political position in a commu- neighborhood in Los Angeles. nity. Many barrios, especially those Source: Getty Images.
Barrio
incomes and low school retention rates. Some people also choose to live in ethnically concentrated barrios because of shared differences from the host (e.g., predominantly Anglo) society, regardless of socioeconomic status. Settllement Pa atte ern ns
Barrios are geographically specific. The U.S. Census Bureau defines a barrio as the primary legal subdivision of municipios in the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, similar to the minor civil divisions used for reporting census data in twenty-eight states. The residential settlement patterns of Latinos vary by their ethnicity and nationality, and this creates distinct barrios in different regions of the country. Of these twenty-eight states, the majority of Latinos reside in the western region. Mexicans reside predominantly in the West, while the majority of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans reside in the Northeast, and the majority of Cubans reside in the South, particularly in South Florida. New Mexico has the largest-percentage Latino population in the United States (42.1%), followed by California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. The majority of Latinos who live in the most populous states are either of Mexican ethnicity or classified as “Some other Hispanic,” which usually includes Central and South Americans. The lowest percentage of Latinos reside in Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Ohio. Although gross numbers of Latinos are reportedly low in these states, distinct barrios, predominantly of Mexican or Central and South American origin, are beginning to develop nationwide. Responding to local, regional, and national labor demands, the 21st-century influx of Latino migrant and undocumented workers influences these barrio developments. In addition, Ohio has maintained several Puerto Rican barrios for at least 40 years. In terms of ethnicity, overall, the majority of Latino residents in these low-population states are identified as either “Mexican” or “Some other Hispanic.” Two of the largest barrios in the United States are “East L.A.,” in Los Angeles, California, a predominantly Mexican American barrio, and “El Barrio,” in the East Harlem section of New York City, a predominantly Puerto Rican barrio. Recent trends in gentrification have diversified these barrios with the arrival of middle-class Whites. With gentrification and rising
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rents and property taxes, many low-income families can no longer afford their neighborhoods, creating a new community increasingly for upper-middle-class Whites. Barrio redevelopment changes the ethnic specificity of its definition. Through gentrification, barrios may no longer be identified by their Spanish moniker, since the new definition no longer relies on ethnic dimensions. Seg gregatiion
The barrio is a highly segregated space. Studies have shown that due to illegal residential segregation and housing discrimination, Latinos are less likely to have fair access to all types of neighborhoods, regardless of their income, occupation, marital status, and educational attainment. The segregation of underrepresented ethnic groups is rooted in social, racial, structural, and income-discriminatory practices. Segregation impacts equal access to viable community resources such as schools, employment opportunities, health services, green spaces, community organizations, and places of faith worship. Racia alizatio on
The barrio is a racialized space, built along ethnic lines that are maintained for the preservation of community authenticity and cultural solidarity. For Latinos, racially segregated spaces are synonymous with highly impoverished spaces. Segregation and the pervasive impact of stereotypes make the barrio an inferior place in which to raise a family. Poor city planning is partially to blame, because barrios are usually located in urban peripheries. Residential segregation results from the high concentration of one ethnic or racial group, which limits and impacts the kind of services that enter or leave a particular residential area. Scott South, Kyle Crowder, and Erik Chavez contended that residential segregation is the result of individual choices about where one chooses to live, determined in part by individuals’ attitudes and preferences about the characteristics of neighborhoods. Studies show that overall, the vast majority of Latinos want to live in racially integrated and heterogeneous neighborhoods. The only exception is the Cuban population, whom researchers found tend to voluntarily remain in predominantly Cuban neighborhoods and form ethnic enclaves, regardless of individual socioeconomic status.
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Ste ere eotypes
Further Readings
The barrio carries the weight of negative stereotypes. Barrios are sometimes described as Latino versions of ghettos, which are contemporarily identified as low-income African American neighborhoods, riddled by economic and social disadvantage. Barrios are stereotyped as having low mobility, poverty, and low political participation. Such labels suggest that social problems in these places come from individual and internal causes or blight, and not from institutional constraints. Barrio residents are imagined to be culturally incapable of ascension into the middle or upper socioeconomic classes.
Elliott, James R. and Mario Sims. 2001. “Ghettos and Barrios: The Impact of Neighborhood Poverty and Race on Job Matching among Blacks and Latinos.” Social Problems 48:341–361. LeTexier, Emmanuelle. 2003. Mobilizing in the Barrio: Conflicting Identities and the Language of Politics. Working Paper No. 78. San Diego: University of California, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. Rodriguez, Clara. 1989. Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman. Siembieda, William J. and Eduardo Lopez Moreno. 1998. “Barrios and the Hispanic American City: Cultural Value and Social Representation.” Journal of Urban Design 3:39–52. South, Scott J., Kyle Crowder, and Erick Chavez. 2005. “Migration and Spatial Assimilation among U.S. Latinos: Classical versus Segmented Assimilation.” Demography 42:497–521.
Realities and Transformations The barrio is a local, regional, national, and international structure. It is a geographical unit with specific social, cultural, and identity politics that permit residents to have a voice in their community. It is a political and urban space that is easily mobilized toward political action. It is at once an inclusive and marginalized space, because many barrio residents prefer to live among other Latinos who share similar characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, language, and socioeconomic status, marked by shared exclusion from the dominant society. Besides gentrification, another transformation that has changed the barrio involves the rise of ethnic entrepreneurship. This concept impacts the way in which residents experience residential and racial segregation. What was once seen as marginalization among barrio residents has now been transformed into an ethnic enclave, which describes an entity that promotes and empowers individual and community agency. This type of business venture encourages the sustenance of ethnic networks, and it promotes business opportunities allowing barrio residents to economically improve the conditions of their communities from within barrio boundaries. Through ethnic enclaves and ethnic entrepreneurship, there is a chance for economic transformation in the barrio. These transformations will also change the way in which the term barrio is redefined for the duration of the 21st century.
BELGIAN AMERICANS Belgian Americans are immigrants from Belgium, a country of 10.5 million as of 2007 estimates, as well as their descendants. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 33,895 Belgian-born individuals lived in the United
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Judith A. Perez See also Black Metropolis; Code of the Street; East Harlem; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Gentrification; Ghetto; Harlem; Racialization; Segregation Stereotypes; Underclass
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States, and 53.7% were citizens. Belgian Americans form two ethnic groups in the United States: the Dutch Flemings, or Flanders (Dutch speaking, from the northern provinces of Belgium), and the Walloons (French speaking, from the southern provinces of Belgium). This entry looks at the background of immigration from Belgium to the United States and the contemporary picture of Belgian Americans.
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scientific and technological contributions. Among them are George Goethals, engineer-builder of the Panama Canal, and Leo Baekeland, pioneer of modern plastics. Also among famous Belgian Americans are Audrey Hepburn, actress; Jean-Claude Van Damme, actor; Father Damien, missionary; and Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau, founder of the Green Bay Packers football team. Jennifer M. Klein
Immigration Patterns The largest wave of Belgians came to the United States during the 19th century, mainly to create better lives for their families and for financial opportunities. From 1820 to 1920, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 130,968 Belgians obtained permanent resident status. Most who moved to the United States during this time were small landowners/farmers, agricultural laborers, miners, craftsmen (e.g., carpenters, masons, and cabinetmakers), and other skilled tradespeople (e.g., glassblowers and lace makers). Between 1920 and 1979, 71,942 Belgians came to the United States. During this time, and especially after the two World Wars, many middle-class and urban professionals left Belgium for the United States, seeking work in universities, laboratories, and industrial corporations. Between 1980 and 2000, a total of 14,922 Belgians obtained legal permanent U.S. resident status.
Contemporary Community Of those Belgian-born people who lived in the United States in 2000, only 10.1% had entered the country prior to 2000. According to the 2000 census, 12.5% spoke English less than “very well.” The median family income was $65,615, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. In recent years, people from Belgium have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2002, about 3,651 Belgians immigrated to the United States annually. About 250 Belgian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, 220,308 individuals of Belgian origin resided in the United States. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, California, and Florida. Belgians have brought many talents and skills to the United States and have made some major
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Sante, Luc. 1998. The Factory of Facts. New York: Pantheon Books. Sante, Luc. 2002. “The Past Is Another Country.” History Workshop Journal 54:221–225. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Belgium. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
BELIZE Belize is a vibrant subtropical country in Central America with a 2007 population of about 300,000 people. It is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the east, Mexico to the north, and Guatemala to the west and south. Internally, Belize is separated into districts that feature vastly different landscapes and are home to a varied array of races and ethnicities. These districts are (from north to south) Corozal, Orange Walk, Belize, Cayo, Stann Creek, and Toledo. The Belize Barrier Reef, located five miles offshore, provides a safe haven to tropical fauna and a number of small habitable islands called cayes (pronounced “keys”). This entry discusses the racial and ethnic groups that make up today’s Belizean population and their history in the country.
Early History Belize has its origins within the Mayan civilization from around 2,000 BC. There is evidence that the
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maximize profits from agricultural products. During the height of colonialism, the population consisted mostly of African slaves and Mayan Indians. Small populations of people with Mayan and Spanish heritage, called Mestizos, also existed at the time. The Mestizo and Maya survived by becoming subsistence farmers or working in the English logging or fruit industries, having being blocked from international trade by the monopolization of land and strict laws regarding the use of land. Land in Belize could be used for logging or subsistence farming only, marginalizing the production of other marketable goods and maintaining English control of the colony. Currently, the European population in Belize is 0.8%.
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Olmec civilization also inhabited the region before its mysterious disappearance around 1050 BC. Profitability of the New World and land initiatives brought Spanish conquistadores to the region. In the 15th century, under the command of Hernan Cortez and with the help of slave labor purchased from Jamaica, the Spanish subdued the Maya and brought the region under the rule of the Spanish crown. Around the end of the 16th century, British mercenaries and investors began logging ventures in the Belizean rain forest. In the 17th century, the rising profits from lumber exports, such as mahogany and other hardwood, sparked the war that culminated in the Battle of St. Georges Caye, in 1798. This famous battle between the Spanish and the British marked the turning point in the war, leading to British victory. The region afterward was officially named British Honduras and was recorded as an English colony. England ruled the colony until Belize gained its independence in 1981.
Population by Race and Ethnicity The Britiish
Even at the peak of colonization in 1788, only 3% of the population of Belize was British. Colonial management relied on slave labor and feudalism to
The Creoles of Belize are descendants of Africans, mainly from West Africa, and European colonists. The Creoles arrived in Belize due to an increased need for labor in the lumber industry and for security against Mayan uprisings. The influx of slaves from Jamaica caused the African population to swell to a majority, which was maintained until the late 1990s, when their numbers were superseded by those of the Mestizo. Creole contributions to the social structure of Belize are strong in the areas of public service, politics, and tourist trade. Creoles are particularly dominant in the maintenance of national identity. Belize Kriol English is the lingua franca of the country. The Creoles make up 24.9% of the population. The Mestizzo
Historically, the Mestizo share indigenous (Mayan) and European ancestry. The Europeans were mainly Spaniards, as they had more access to lands containing the Maya and other indigenous inhabitants. Due to the geographical location of Belize, Mestizos have supplanted the Creoles as the dominant culture. Immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and other Latin American countries have created a shift in population over the last 25 years. Mestizos also contribute to the social dynamic of Belize through public service; however, their strength lies within agricultural trade. They currently control the citrus, banana, and most of the fishing industries within the country. Mestizos currently control the majority, at 48.8% of the population.
Bell Curve, Th he
The Gariffuna
The Garifuna culture is a dynamic Afro-Indian culture that comes from the Carib Indians and African descendants on the island of St. Vincent. The indigenous population enjoyed relative freedom from slavery until the arrival of the British in 1791. The darker Garifuna were separated from the fairer-skinned natives and expelled from the island. The Garifuna eventually migrated to mainland Honduras and Belize. Currently, the Garifuna inhabit the Stan Creek District, and their major cities include Dangriga and Placencia. The Garifuna people also created the musical dimensions of the country, with the traditional punta rhythm at the heart of the music and dance of Belize. They make up 6.1% of the population of Belize. The Maya
Mayan ruins are abundant throughout the countryside, from Altun Ha in the center of Belize to Laminai in the northwest. The Maya enjoyed rule and homogeneous culture until the arrival of the Spanish. Rebellion against Spanish rule generated persecution that continues to the present day. Spanish victories against Mayan rebellion in colonial Mexico caused the mass migration of the Yucatan Maya south into Belize, where they were bereft of land and resources. Many of these Maya live in extreme poverty, without formal education and access. The Mopan Maya were the oldest inhabitants, with the Ketchi and Yucatan Maya arriving after Spanish oppression became rampant in Latin America. The appearance of Mayan refugees and Mestizo immigrants gave rise to the common belief among Creoles that these groups did not exist in the country before mass migration. In fact, the Maya are the oldest inhabitants of Belize. At present, the combined Mayan population (Mopan, Ketchi, and Yucatan) stands at 9.6% of the country’s inhabitants. Oth her Eth hnicc Min noritiies
Although sparsely represented, other ethnic minorities control vast amounts of commerce and trade in Belize. The German Mennonites (3.0%) control practically all the construction and mechanical technologies imported internationally. The Chinese (0.7%) and the East Indians (3.6%) are dominant in the grocery and food industries. Combined, these minorities control roughly two-thirds of the grocery
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business in the major towns in Belize. Other minorities include African (0.3%) and Lebanese (.01%). C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Central Americans in the United States; Colonialism; Creole; Jamaica; Latin America, Indigenous People; Mennonites
Further Readings
Belize Ministry of Education. 2001. Belize Abstract of Statistics Belize City: Belize Central Statistical Office. Belize Ministry of Education. 2005. Education in Belize. Belize City: Ministry of Education. Hoetank, H. 1967. Caribbean Race Relations: A Study of Two Variants. London: Oxford University Press. Natural Light Productions. 2006. A History of Belize. Retrieved from http://www.belizenet.com/history/toc.html
BELL CURVE, THE The Bell Curve, published in 1994 by Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein and public policy analyst Charles Murray, addresses the role of intelligence in U.S. society. Its discussion of racial differences in intelligence especially generated much controversy. This entry summarizes the book’s content and discusses its impact.
What the Book Says Risse of the Cognitiv ve Elite e
Most of The Bell Curve examines the ways intelligence affects the fate of individuals in the U.S. social structure, irrespective of race or ethnicity. Extending earlier work by Herrnstein, The Bell Curve depicts the emergence of a cognitive elite in U.S. society during the 20th century, manifested by such trends as an increasing correlation between college graduation and IQ and increasing selectivity of top universities. The book identifies the underlying causes of these trends as (a) the declining salience of social origin as the major factor of class distinctions and (b) the growing demand for cognitive skills in the marketplace of modern industrial society. It relates the premium placed on intelligence to the increasing scale of organizations and markets, combined with the intellectual
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demands of complex technologies and intricate regulatory structures. According to the book, this process of “cognitive partitioning” results in the concentration of individuals with high IQs in the ranks of the educated elite and high-prestige occupations. Herrnstein and Murray reckon that because of assortative mating for intelligence (the tendency of spouses to have similar IQs) and because IQ is in part genetically inherited, cognitive partitioning may lead to the formation of a quasi-hereditary cognitive elite, separated from the rest of the population by a widening economic gap and physical distance in residence and the workplace. They paint a pessimistic picture of a future “custodial state,” in which the cognitive elite (now merged with the affluent) isolates itself in gated communities from a low-IQ underclass drained of its leadership and confined to deteriorating urban ghettos. Against this stark projection, the authors express hope for an alternative future, in which there would be a return to local communities in which neighbors take care of each other, rules of conduct would be made simple to understand and to follow, and everyone would find a “valued place” irrespective of their ability. Herrnstein and Murray document the importance of intelligence in contemporary U.S. society with analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a longitudinal study of 12,000 youth aged 14 to 22 in 1979. Using data for non-Hispanic Whites only, they contrast the explanatory power of IQ (measured as the score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test) with that of socioeconomic status (a composite measure based on parents’ income, education, and occupational status) in predicting socioeconomic outcomes. For many outcomes—dropping out of school, graduating from college, living in poverty, being unemployed, committing a crime, or having a child out of wedlock—they find that IQ is a better predictor of the outcome than is socioeconomic status. Effects of IQ are particularly strong for educational and economic outcomes such as dropping out of high school, graduating from college, and being dependent on welfare. IQ is more weakly related to other life outcomes, such as being married before the age of 30 or self-reported crime. Racia al and Eth hnic Differrences
Herrnstein and Murray review extensive research showing that the mean IQ of Blacks is about one standard deviation lower than the mean IQ of Whites and
the mean IQ of East Asians is one-third of a standard deviation higher than the mean IQ of Whites. They note that some empirical patterns point to genetic roots for these group differences. Clues include the systematic difference in intellectual profile between East Asians and Whites, with the East Asian advantage most pronounced in nonverbal tests; the finding that Black and White scores differ most on the most g-loaded tests, that is, those most related to a general intelligence factor; and the high heritability of individual (within-group) differences in IQ, which, for the group differences in IQ to be purely environmental, implies implausibly large group differences in environmental quality. Herrnstein and Murray concede, however, that there is insufficient evidence to estimate the relative impacts of genetic and environmental factors on group differences. Herrnstein and Murray analyze differences in socioeconomic outcomes among Blacks, Whites, and Latinos using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Statistically controlling for IQ substantially reduces or eliminates the gap between Blacks and Whites for some measures, such as proportion below the poverty line and average wages. For college graduation and access to professional occupations, their analysis indicates that the gap is reversed: At a given level of IQ, a Black person has a higher probability than a White person of graduating from college and holding a professional occupation. Patterns of Latino-White differences are similar but less pronounced. Affirma ativ ve Action n
Herrnstein and Murray summarize research showing that formal schooling and special intervention programs such as Head Start are generally ineffective in raising IQ—with the possible exception of adoption and some very intensive intervention programs directed at young children. Turning to affirmative action in education and in the labor market, they show that for two dozen mostly elite private universities, the median difference in SAT scores of Black and White students in entering cohorts is 180 SAT points, a discrepancy of 1.3 standard deviations, placing the average Black student at the 10th percentile of the IQ distribution for Whites. Based on this and other findings, Herrnstein and Murray conclude that Black and Latino minority applicants to college and graduate school are given an extremely large advantage over Whites in competition
Bell Curve, Th he
for admission. The minority advantage tends to be greater the more selective the university, the authors say. The median SAT score for Asian entering-student cohorts is greater than that for Whites, indicating an Asian disadvantage in college admission. While crediting affirmative action programs for opening college opportunities for more Blacks and Latinos, Herrnstein and Murray underscore the downside of affirmative action, contending that it produces unfairness in college admission and hiring, a concentration of minorities among poorly achieving students on campuses, distrust of minority credentials in the larger society, and lowered productivity in the labor force because of suboptimal matching of ability and occupation. They reckon that the current practice of affirmative action in higher education and the workplace cannot survive public scrutiny. They call for scrapping existing job discrimination legislation and urge a return to what they see as an earlier conception of affirmative action: giving the nod to the candidate from a disadvantaged background when qualifications are similar, irrespective of skin color or ethnicity.
Intellectual Context The Bell Curve enjoyed considerable commercial success for a book of this type (375,000 copies sold by late 2007) but generated considerable controversy by challenging central ethical and political convictions of large segments of academia, the media, and the general public. The idea that racial differences in IQ might be in part genetic was particularly provocative. Besides impugning the existence of a general intelligence factor and the validity of IQ tests, critics have claimed that races, being social constructs, have no objective existence in modern humans; that IQ scores do not measure intelligence, but rather adherence to White middleclass values; that the secular increase in IQ scores in industrial societies (Flynn effect) suggests that racial differences in IQ are environmental in origin; that Herrnstein and Murray have overlooked some early intervention programs that succeeded in raising the IQ of children; that the measure of socioeconomic status they use is defective; that the proportion of variance explained in the statistical models used by the authors is small; that some of the research cited in the book was funded by the conservative Pioneer Fund; and that the scores of African Americans are depressed not for genetic causes, but because of the history of slavery and social subordination the group experienced.
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Amid the furor in the aftermath of publication, there was an almost palpable expectation that a critique would deal the book a decisive blow by uncovering a “smoking gun,” an irreparable defect invalidating the work as a whole. That expectation failed for three reasons. First, much of the massive work consists of reviews of findings from psychometric and behavioral genetic research. Herrnstein and Murray’s interpretation of these literatures and their conclusions about the lack of bias in IQ tests, the heritability of IQ, and the existence and meaning of racial and ethnic differences—with the exception of a genetic basis of racial differences— are largely consistent with the mainstream view as expressed in a standard textbook by Nathan Brody, a consensus statement by Linda Gottfredson cosigned by 52 experts, and the report of a panel commissioned by the American Psychological Association (headed by Ulric Neisser). Part of the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve is due to the considerable gap between the views of experts in the relevant fields and the views held by the general public, the media, and many social scientists outside these fields. A second explanation for the lack of an effective rebuttal is the public accessibility of the data Herrnstein and Murray analyzed and the ordinariness of the statistical methodology they used. Critics such as sociologist Claude Fischer and colleagues used the same data to replicate The Bell Curve’s results and test alternative statistical specifications, obtaining lower estimates of the impact of IQ on some socioeconomic outcomes. However, no reanalysis has been able to overturn Herrnstein and Murray’s central finding that IQ measured in adolescence is a more powerful predictor of many aspects of adult socioeconomic achievement than any single “background” variable, including the composite measure of socioeconomic status traditionally used by social scientists. A third circumstance that favored The Bell Curve is the explosion of knowledge on the role of genes in human behavior and the renaissance of evolutionary thinking in contemporary social thought. The Darwinian revival makes the idea of a substantial role of genes in individual differences, including behavioral differences, more acceptable. The traditional social science model of human beings as blank slates inscribed by the environment and ambient culture has become correspondingly less compelling. The Bell Curve contributed an articulate and accessible presentation of findings—such as the high
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heritability of IQ, the absence of race bias in major IQ tests, the high validity of IQ in predicting job performance, the failure of many intervention programs to durably raise the IQ of children—that had been reserved to specialists. It provided a breath of fresh air in an area riddled with taboos. A number of detailed interpretations in The Bell Curve will be found wanting. The question of a genetic basis of race differences is not settled (compare discussions by Nathan Brody and Arthur Jensen). However, the major conclusions of The Bell Curve are not likely to be overturned, and the issues it aired are now exposed for public debate.
(short term or long term), variations in amount of use of each language, and distinctions in programmatic composition. The Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education calls it “a simple label for a complex phenomenon.” Although it has received renewed attention in recent years, bilingual education is nothing new, having existed wherever people who speak different languages coexist. This entry examines the historical, legislative, and theoretical context of bilingual education, briefly describes the different programs used to achieve this goal, and discusses policy issues and research on effectiveness.
François Nielsen See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Educational Performance and Attainment; Intelligence Tests; Pipeline; Tracking
Further Readings
Brody, Nathan. 1992. Intelligence. 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press. Fischer, Claude S., Michael Hout, Martín Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler, and Kim Vos. 1996. Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gottfredson, Linda S. 1997. “Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial with 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography.” Intelligence 24:13–23. (Originally appeared in Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994) Herrnstein, Richard J. 1973. IQ in the Meritocracy. Boston, MA: Atlantic–Little, Brown. Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. Jensen, Arthur R. 1998. The g-Factor: The Science of Mental Ability. Westport, CT: Praeger. Neisser, Ulric, Gwyneth Boodoo, Thomas J. Bouchard, A. Wade Boykin, Nathan Brody, Stephen J. Ceci, et al. 1996. “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns.” American Psychologist 51:77–101.
BILINGUAL EDUCATION Bilingual education is a multidimensional concept used to refer to numerous types of program designs that follow divergent linguistic goals (bilingualism or monolingualism), differences in length of implementation
The Context Histo ory
Societies have implemented different forms of bilingual education for over 5,000 years, going back to the ancient world. For most societies, linguistic diversity is the norm, not the exception. Bilingualism is found throughout the world, in all countries, in all social classes, and across all age-groups. For centuries, bilingual and multilingual societies have been created out of trade, migration, politics, and invasion. In recent decades, the advent of the information and communication age, increasing international travel, and growing migration have augmented the bilingual population throughout the globe. A study conducted by the United Nations found that 66% of the world’s children are now bilingual or multilingual, a remarkable increase over the last century. This boost in multilingualism is partly due to the fact that more people around the world are choosing to educate their children in a second language, specifically Arabic, Chinese, English, Russian, or Spanish. Australia, Paraguay, Switzerland, China, and Canada, among numerous other countries, have successfully practiced and encouraged bilingual and multilingual education. Contrary to popular belief, bilingual education in the United States is also not a new phenomenon. Early colonies engaged in bilingual schooling as early as the 1600s. In 1839, Ohio became the first state to adopt a bilingual education law permitting German-English instruction, and, in 1847, Louisiana approved a similar provision for French-English education. The New Mexico Territory adopted a law to authorize SpanishEnglish schooling in 1850. William Harris, the school superintendent of St. Louis, who later became U.S. Commissioner of Education, argued in favor of
Bilingual Education
bilingual education in the 1870s, asserting that abruptly changing traditions, cultures, and religions could have serious personal consequences. Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York, Illinois, Maryland, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have offered bilingual instruction in Norwegian, Italian, Cherokee, Polish, Chinese, and Czech. For example, San Francisco established Chinese language schools beginning in the mid-1880s; in the late 19th century, seven Czech language schools were supported by the state school fund in Texas. By the early 20th century, at least 600,000 students in public and parochial schools received instruction in German. However, anti-German and anti-immigrant sentiments after World War I prompted states to abolish bilingual education in most U.S. schools and enact English-only instruction laws. The ban against bilingual schooling lasted until the early 1960s. The consistent academic failure of many non-English-speaking students coupled with the success of bilingual education programs established by Cuban exiles in Dade County, Florida, after the Cuban revolution inspired a revival of bilingual instruction in the United States. Changing Policy y
The Bilingual Education Act, enacted as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was passed in 1968, providing federal funding to encourage local school districts to implement native language instruction and other types of support services for English language learners. In 2002, it was superseded by the English Language Acquisition Act under the new federal law, the No Child Left Behind Act. Title VII became Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which no longer gave funding priority to native language instruction and instead left the choice of how to spend federal funds for English language learners to the discretion of each state. In its landmark 1974 decision in Lau v. Nichols, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.” The court’s decision required schools to take “affirmative steps” to overcome language barriers impeding children’s access to the curriculum. Congress
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immediately endorsed this principle in the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974. Neither the Bilingual Education Act nor the Lau decision requires any particular methodology for teaching students with limited English proficiency. That is, there is no federal mandate for bilingual education (although a few states mandate it under certain circumstances). What civil rights laws do require are educational programs that offer equal opportunities for English language learners. Seccond-LLanguage Theories
Studies indicate that cognitive skills are best acquired through the primary language and then transferred to the second language. The use of their home language helps children develop critical thinking abilities and cognitive skills, according to some researchers; this cognitive structuring is shaped not only by linguistic knowledge but also by cultural knowledge and the context in which that knowledge is obtained. Cummins proposed three principles relevant to bilingual development and language teaching. First, the additive bilingual enrichment principle contends that being bilingual has no negative consequences for children and some intellectual and linguistic benefits. Numerous studies have reported findings that indicate that bilingual children demonstrate a greater awareness of linguistic meanings and seem to be more flexible in their thinking than monolingual children. Bilingual children must decipher much more linguistic input through the effort of gaining command of two languages than monolingual children, who are exposed to only one language system. Cummins’s second principle, the interdependence principle, is based on the premise that there is an underlying cognitive and academic proficiency common across all languages regardless of their distinct surface features. Cummins maintains that first- and secondlanguage academic skills are interdependent and that there is no relationship between the amount of instructional time spent in the second language and academic achievement. According to Cummins, common underlying proficiency makes possible the transfer of literacyrelated skills between languages. He found that transfer is more likely from the minority to the majority language due to the greater exposure to literacy in the majority language and the social pressures to learn it. Cummins’s third principle, the interactive pedagogy principle, subscribes to Krashen’s assertion that
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language is acquired involuntarily and effortlessly only when it is comprehensible. The key factor in Krashen’s theoretical model is comprehensible input: messages in the second language that make sense when modified and facilitated by visual aids and context. He contends that people acquire grammatical structures in their natural order when sufficient amounts of high-quality input are present. Rules are then generalized from verbal stimuli according to innate principles of grammar. The principle of comprehensible input is based on the idea that the main function of language use is meaningful communication. The importance of meaningful language use at all stages in the acquisition of second-language skills has become recognized as a critical and determining factor for the successful development of a second language and the maintenance of the first language.
Diverse Programs Broadly defined, bilingual education includes any educational program that uses two languages for instruction. Unlike foreign language education, where students study the target language and culture as a subject, bilingual education usually entails the study of literacy and/or content areas (math, science, and social studies) through two languages, the majority language (English) and a minority language (such as Navajo, Spanish, or Chinese). In the United States, bilingual education programs may be offered in early childhood, elementary, and high school settings and sometimes in colleges and universities. The feasibility of offering bilingual education programs for second-language learners depends on several factors: (a) sufficient numbers of students from the same language group, (b) availability of certified bilingual teachers, and (c) state and local policies. One of many incorrect assertions in the area of bilingual education is that language learners can acquire English in less than 1 year. Decades of research both in the United States and abroad have demonstrated that the acquisition of academic language for a second-language learner takes 5 to 7 years, in comparison to the length of time required to learn conversational language, which may range from 1 to 2 years. Mackey categorized ninety variations of bilingual education around the world. Nevertheless, all programs in which English language learners (also known as limited English proficient or language minority students) participate fall under two critical paradigms: (1) additive programs, which aim to
develop full bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism by adding the second language and maintaining and developing the first language, and (2) subtractive programs, which seek to make students monolingual in the majority language by abandoning their native languages. Additive program models include maintenance, developmental bilingual, heritage language, and dual-language or two-way immersion, while subtractive models include transitional bilingual education and newcomer programs. Other program models for English language learners that do not fall under the category of bilingual education because they generally use English only as the medium of instruction are structured English immersion and English as a second language (ESL). Researchers and educators differ in their conceptions and definitions of bilingual education; nevertheless, the descriptions of the models presented here provide general characteristics of the types of educational programs that are available to English language learners in the United States. Transitional Bilingual Education, Early Exit and Late Exit. This model temporarily supports students’ academic development by providing native language instruction as they acquire English through ESL for a period ranging from 1 to 8 years. The principal objective is to facilitate students’ academic progress through the languages they understand, while they acquire proficiency in the second language to function academically in English. Transitional bilingual education consists of two program types, early exit and late exit. The early-exit model is most widely implemented in the United States, where English language learners are mainstreamed (exited) into the general English education program after 1 to 4 years, once they have achieved proficiency in English. Late-exit students continue to receive instruction in the native language for a few more years after having achieved proficiency in English. The primary goal in late exit is to continue to develop students’ literacy and oral language skills in the native language as well as in English for a longer period of time. Maintenance Bilingual Education. This model is sometimes known as developmental or enrichment education. In this model, English language learners maintain and develop their native languages as they acquire English, usually through eighth grade or beyond. The primary aim of maintenance bilingual education is for students to develop bilingual and biliterate proficiencies and to achieve academically at
Bilingual Education
grade level. Maintenance bilingual programs are culturally responsive because they value and build on students’ home cultural and linguistic knowledge. Heritage Language. This program model is designed for students who come from homes where a language other than English is used, including people of indigenous ancestry, colonized groups, new immigrants and refugees, and children and grandchildren of immigrants. The aim of these programs is either to maintain the language and culture of the home or to revitalize the native language and culture, which is no longer used fluently by the younger generation of its speakers. Dual-Language Education. This additive form of immersion, also known as two-way bilingual immersion, is the only bilingual program that integrates English native speakers with speakers of another language in the common pursuit of continuing to develop their native language and culture while acquiring a second language and culture. The major goals of this model are to develop full biliteracy and bilingualism, high academic achievement, and multicultural competencies. Dual-language education in the United States was adapted from the Canadian educational program that began in 1965 in Montreal, where Englishspeaking children initially received all curriculum instruction in French and gradually added English. Newcomer Centers. These programs provide academic, linguistic, and social support to recently immigrated students typically in middle or high school settings and are designed to address the needs of recent arrivals who have interrupted schooling or no schooling. Newcomer centers were created to address the special needs of English language learners that bilingual or ESL programs are not adequately equipped to manage. A key feature of most newcomer centers is the provision of an emotionally safe learning environment that supports rapid second-language learning, adaptation to the host culture, and development of a positive self-image.
The Policy Debate In the United States, English is a fundamental tool needed to achieve in school and to have the potential to become a successful member of society. However, the loss of the home language and culture is often seen as necessary for the appropriate development of English. Hence, linguistic minorities may experience
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not only a loss of personal identity and emotional bonds with their communities but also rejection from the mainstream society. Others suggest that mastering a second language is not necessarily linked to losing proficiency in the first. In this view, additive bilingualism, in which a second language is acquired while maintaining and continuing to develop the first, is a healthy and viable alternative to subtractive bilingualism. Bartolomé points to the contradiction related to languages in the United States, where minority students are discouraged from sustaining their native languages, but English-speaking students are required to study a foreign language as a college prerequisite. The debate over how to best meet the academic and linguistic needs of English language learners in schools reflects not only different basic ideologies but also beliefs about linguistic diversity, immigration, and immigrant rights. Ruiz delineates three broad orientations on language diversity that have driven policy and politics in the United States for centuries. The first, language as a problem orientation, subscribes to the notion that language diversity results in social conflict, divisiveness, and ethnic strife. The second, language as a right orientation, views language as a basic human right and challenges language prejudice and discrimination. The third, language as a resource orientation, considers the diverse linguistic capital of a society as a cultural, social, personal, and national resource, both in terms of its economic potential and also as a means to foster social unity. Since the early 1980s, a resurgence of the language as a problem orientation has paved the way for the English-only (or official English) movement, which aims to establish English as the official language of the United States by law. As a result of this movement, two opposing organizations emerged: (1) U.S. English, supporting the push to make English the official language of the United States by restricting governmentsupported services in non-English languages, including bilingual education, and (2) English Plus, countering the necessity to make English the official language and promoting linguistic pluralism. To date, bills introduced in Congress to make English the official language of the United States have failed. Nonetheless, twenty-six states have passed official English laws. Language restrictionism policies are closely tied to language minority education. California’s Proposition 227, the English Language Education for Children in Public Schools Initiative, was proposed by software entrepreneur Ron Unz. Its passage in 1998 made it law to disband bilingual education and institute compulsory
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1-year English immersion programs for English language learners. Similarly, Arizona passed Proposition 223 in 2000, which also eliminated bilingual education for linguistically diverse students, and voters in Massachusetts approved an initiative to discontinue bilingual education in 2002. Some feel that claims about the ineffectiveness of bilingual education coupled with the media’s predisposition against it have allowed for the dissemination of inaccuracies and misinformation. The inadequate implementation of many bilingual programs has further cultivated the notion that bilingual education is a failure. The low performance of most bilingual education programs is closely correlated to the lack of adequate funds, scarcity of qualified educators, inappropriately sized classes, and absence of proven teaching methodology. Solidly designed bilingual programs that address these fundamental factors have proven to be highly effective for linguistically diverse students. Numerous studies have demonstrated that students who participate in programs that use their native languages for instruction for more than 3 years show better academic performance, mastery of English, and lower drop-out rates. Because educational program evaluation studies are difficult to design, the effectiveness of bilingual education programs remains in dispute. The vast variations in program implementation, pedagogical approaches used, types of schools and student populations, and communities being compared add to the difficult task of determining these programs’ effectiveness. Nevertheless, researchers, educators, and applied linguists recognize that the following premises have strong empirical support: (a) Native language instruction does not retard the acquisition of English; (b) well-developed skills in the native language are associated with high levels of academic achievement; and (c) bilingualism is a valuable skill, for individuals and for the country. The use of the native language in bilingual education for linguistic minority students in the United States remains a controversial and politically charged issue. Bilingual education goes beyond education methodologies and language use to include ideological positions on ethnic minorities and their communities. Sonia W. Soltero See also Affirmative Action in Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Educational Performance and Attainment; English Immersion; Foreign Students; Higher Education; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Pipeline; Proposition 187
Further Readings
August, Diane and Kenji Hakuta. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Baker, Colin. 2006. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Baker, Colin and Sylvia Prys Jones. 1998. Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Castro Feinberg, Rosa. 2002. Bilingual Education: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Crawford, James. 2004. Educating English Learners: Language Diversity in the Classroom. Los Angeles: Bilingual Educational Services. Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Goble, Paul. 2001. “The Rise in Bilingualism.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved from http://www .rferl.org/features/2001/06/14062001124636.asp Krashen, Stephen. 1996. Every Person a Reader: An Alternative to the California Task Force Report on Reading. Culver City, CA: Language Education Associates. Lambert, Wallace E. and G. Richard Tucker. 1972. Bilingual Education of Children: The St. Lambert Experiment. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Mackey, William Francis. 1978. “The Importation of Bilingual Education Models.” Pp. 1–18 in Georgetown University Roundtable: International Dimensions of Education, edited by J. Alatis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Rothstein, Richard. 1998. “Bilingual Education: The Controversy.” Phi Delta Kappan 79:672–678. Soltero, Sonia W. 2004. Dual Language: Teaching and Learning in Two Languages. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Thomas, Wayne and Virginia Collier. 2002. A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-Term Academic Achievement. Santa Cruz, CA, and Washington, DC: Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. Retrieved from http://crede .berkeley.edu/research/llaa/1.1_final.html
BIOMEDICINE, AFRICAN AMERICANS AND Research has documented the unequal medical treatment of patients based on race or ethnicity (as well as by socioeconomic status). Former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher has said that given the
Biomedicine, African Americans and
diversity of the U.S. population, it is in the best interests of the United States to maximize the health of all Americans. There is a consensus in the research and policy literatures that eliminating disparities should be one of the primary goals of U.S. health care policy, and increasing the participation of African Americans in the biomedical workforce is seen as an important way to achieve that goal. This entry discusses promising policies, programs, and practices to increase the number of African American physicians and biological scientists.
Importance of a Diverse Workforce Research indicates that even when they have the same degree of insurance and other factors correlated with access to health care—such as ability to pay for care— racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health care than Whites. Another consistent finding is that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely than Whites to receive needed services and clinically necessary procedures. This unequal medical treatment based on race and ethnicity occurs across a range of procedures, from routine treatments for common health problems to treatments in disease areas such as cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness. A preponderance of scientific evidence supports the importance of increasing the participation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in the biomedical workforce as physicians/clinicians, researchers, and faculty. Data from a 2004 survey indicate that increasing racial and ethnic diversity among health professionals increases access to health care. Specifically, the survey found that 51% of African American medical school graduates plan to practice in underserved areas, compared with 20% of all U.S. medical school graduates, and that officebased patient care is the major professional activity for a greater percentage of physicians who are African American (64%), Hispanic/Latino (62.6%), and Native American (60.9%) than for physicians who are Asian American (53.6%). There is a consensus in the research literature that all racial and ethnic groups prefer physicians of their same race. Racial and ethnic minority patients’ ratings of the quality of their health care tend to be higher when physician and patient are of the same race. Diversity among health care professionals is beneficial not only for African American, Hispanic, and Native American physicians, but for all physicians
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because it broadens the cultural competence of all physicians. Evidence suggests that racial and ethnic diversity is equally important among physicians and biomedical, biological, and life sciences researchers. For example, although African Americans account for approximately 40% of AIDS-related deaths, few African Americans are among U.S. scientists—bench or clinical— conducting research on AIDS. It is crucially important that African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans pursue biomedical career tracks in research because biomedical and life science researchers from diverse backgrounds have the potential to increase the variety of perspectives brought to bear on the research enterprise, which, in turn, enhances the quality of research and treatment. Similarly, it is important that biomedical and life sciences teaching and research faculties be diverse to increase the probability of increasing the variety of perspectives among those determining who will practice in the future.
Workforce Trends Mediccin ne
African Americans are among the groups that are most underrepresented in medicine. In 2002, for example, African Americans made up 12.2% of the U.S. population, but only 3.3% of U.S. physicians. The road to the medical profession begins in the undergraduate years. Approximately 3% of all U.S. BA/BS graduates apply to U.S. medical schools; over the past 20 years, biology majors made up 55% of all medical school applicants. Between the academic years 1993/1994 and 2003/2004, although the number of African American biology majors increased 96% (from 899 to 1,763), the proportion of African American biology majors applying to medical school decreased from 83% to 44%. This has serious ramifications in light of the fact that almost 78% of Black physicians practicing medicine today graduated from medical school after 1980. African Americans are severely underrepresented on U.S. medical school faculties and tend to be concentrated in the lower academic ranks. As of December 2004, there were 114,084 faculty members in U.S. medical institutions. Of these, approximately 72% were non-Hispanic White, and 13% were Asian. African Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders combined made up 7.2% of medical faculty members and
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were primarily concentrated at the level of assistant professor; males were more likely than females to be full professors. Research from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) suggests that trends in the numbers of racial and ethnic minority applicants to U.S. medical schools are related to court rulings concerning affirmative action. The number of racial and ethnic minority medical school applicants, which peaked in 1996, declined from 1997 to 2002—after the court ruled against affirmative action in Hopwood v. Texas in 1995 and the state of California passed Proposition 209 in 1996. However, after two Supreme Court rulings in 2003, the number of minority medical school applicants increased. Biollog giccal, Hea alth h, and Life Science es
The number of bachelor’s degrees in the biological sciences earned by African Americans increased from 2,385 in 1992 to 4,685 in 2001; African American females largely drove this increase. Similarly, the number of African Americans earning PhDs in the biological sciences increased from 78 in 1994 to a high of 139 in 2001, then decreased to 108 in 2003. Between 1998 and 2000, the number of African American life scientists in the federal government increased from 1,201 to 1,366. Among doctoral life and related scientists employed full-time in the federal government, the annual median salary earned by Blacks ($72,100) was slightly less than that earned by Whites ($73,000). In 2001, among doctoral life and related scientists employed full-time, Blacks earned the lowest annual median salary ($75,000) in the private for-profit sector; non-Hispanic Whites earned $87,000; and Asian/Pacific Islanders earned $77,000. In universities and 4-year colleges, Black doctoral scientists earned less than non-Hispanic Whites— $53,100 and $63,000, respectively.
Policies and Practices During the past 2 decades, there has been a proliferation of programs to increase and enhance the participation of underrepresented racial minorities in the biomedical sciences. However, evidence of program effectiveness has been largely anecdotal or minimal because much of the funding of the early programs did not include support for evaluation. Unambiguous measures and indicators are needed to identify the most effective and promising programs, practices, and
policies designed to broaden the participation of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups in the life sciences. Associa atio on of Americcan Medical Colleg ges
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has several initiatives to diversify the medical school applicant pool and support medical school faculty and administration. In November 2006, the AAMC announced an initiative, AspiringDocs.org, which is both an outreach effort and a Web site to increase the numbers of African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American college students from all undergraduate majors who pursue careers in medicine. This site creates an online community among aspiring doctors and provides information from the AAMC and other experts in the medical community. Unlike many initiatives, AspiringDocs.org was informed by an analysis of the number of racial and ethnic minority biology majors by undergraduate institution type and the yield of the institution in terms of medical school applicants. Other AAMC initiatives include tools for assessing and measuring diversity in medical education, the Nickens Faculty Fellowship, and minority faculty career development seminars. Nattio onal Institu ute es of Health
The primary funding agency for biomedical research in the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has a congressional mandate, the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, to end health care disparities based on race and ethnicity. Consequently, every center at the NIH has adopted a plan to address the issue of increased participation in the biomedical sciences. The increase in the number of African Americans earning doctorates in the biological sciences was not reflected in the numbers of African American PhD postdoctoral fellows or tenure-track or tenuredinvestigator appointments within the NIH. Senior NIH officials have voiced their concerns over the agency’s lack of diversity, particularly for African Americans, at senior scientific levels. Although the NIH created the National Center for Minority Health Disparities in 2000, some observers contend that the center did not have much impact on the plight of minority scientists within the agency. In 2005, the report from the third phase of the National Research Council (NRC) committee’s
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assessment of the NIH Minority Research Training Programs severely criticized NIH-funded programs for failing to collect, keep, and analyze data on the outcomes of these training programs. Responding to the NRC’s criticism, the NIH division of Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) inaugurated the “Efficacy of Interventions to Promote Research Careers” grants to examine and analyze both the outcomes and assumptions of various NIH programs. One primary goal of the NIH Health Disparities Postdoctoral Scholars Fellowship Program is to increase the numbers of highly trained scientists and clinical investigators (from racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented in biomedical research) to focus research on differences in health care based on race and ethnicity; however, it is too early to determine the success of this program. Progress is not always linear. One recent development that does not bode well for diversifying the U.S. biomedical workforce is the trend among federal government agencies to shift from programs targeted explicitly to underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities. For example, in 1998, the National Science Foundation ended its Minority Graduate Fellowship Program, which began in the mid-1960s. Data indicate significant declines in the numbers of African American and Hispanic students awarded National Science Foundation graduate fellowships (despite claims that the program would reach out to all students). Identifying the policies, programs, and practices that are and are not effective or promising in recruiting and retaining African Americans in careers in the biomedical sciences requires systematic compilation and assessment of data. Longitudinal data on program participants are necessary to examine the effects of various interventions throughout the career trajectory; these data must be disaggregated to enhance understanding of the impact of the confluence of race, ethnicity, and gender on careers in biomedicine. Program and policy evaluations, as well as longitudinal career data, should inform current and future efforts to increase the participation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in biomedical science careers. Cheryl B. Leggon See Appendix B See also Affirmative Action in Education; Black Intellectuals; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Health Disparities; Pipeline; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Science Faculties, Women of Color on
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Further Readings
Association of American Medical Colleges. 2006. Diversity in the Physician Workforce: Facts & Figures 2006. Available from http://www.aamc.org/publications Leggon, Cheryl and Willie Pearson. N.d. Assessing Programs to Improve Minority Participation in STEM Fields: What We Know and What We Need to Know. Available from http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache: JyyBbQtur1MJ:www.umich.edu/~advproj/ncid/ assessing_programs.pdf Manning, Kenneth R. 1983. Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just. New York: Oxford University Press. Smedley, Brian D., Adrienne Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson, eds. 2003. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Web Sites
Association of American Medical Colleges, Minorities in Medicine: http://www.aamc.org/students/minorities
BIRTH
OF A
NATION, THE
D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), the first feature-length studio production in the United States and the first feature film to be screened at the White House, is considered by many to be an original text of cinematic aesthetics as well as the foundation of a broad range of racist stereotypes about African Americans. The film has been mistaken as an accurate history of race relations in the aftermath of the Civil War. However, it is more accurate to claim that the film has created history from racist fantasies and that it persists in doing so. Critic Manthia Diawara has called the film the “grammar book” and “master text” of racism in the United States, which fixes the wide range of secondary and servile roles for African Americans that support White dominance. The Birth of a Nation intensified racial phobias and has been used as a recruitment film for the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), while inspiring a contemporaneous critical response to its representational repertoire in the form of protests by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the production of alternative images of African Americans. This entry describes the film and its impact.
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Americans and their allies upset the social order of the nation. The Sto ory
The Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman, traces the anxieties in the postemancipation South and provides a noncondemnatory view of the actions taken to repress and control African Americans. The film is set at the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Reconstruction period, when Northern victory led to the elimination of the institution of slavery. The film depicts two families, the Northern Stillwell family and the Southern Camerons, but it focuses on the latter as the main proScene from The Birth of a Nation. D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film is one of the most tagonists. The story builds on national influential and controversial films in the history of cinema. In the film, Griffith internal conflict, in which the South is presents an inaccurate view of the devastation wrought by the Civil War deemed the authentic moral core of the (especially in the South) and the alleged social disruptions caused by United States and the North is degenerReconstruction. The motion picture sends the message that the only recourse left to the South was to develop organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Even conate, decadent, and overly permissive. temporary filmmakers who seek to represent African Americans in a nuanced The Southern Camerons are sympaand nonstereotypical manner must deal in some way with the long shadow of thetic victims of the war; they are raided by The Birth of a Nation. a renegade Black troop despite being the Source: Roger-Viollet/The Image Works. benevolent protectors of their slaves. They suffer and struggle during the war, and their way of life is destroyed as a result of Making Film History the liberation of African Americans and the postwar Until The Birth of a Nation, movies consisted of two chaos of riots and pillaging. These African Americans are or three reels of film; they were usually about 15 portrayed as unintelligent and primitive brutes who seek minutes in length and depicted simple and casually to topple Southern order and disrupt social civility. filmed events. Griffith’s film institutionalized filmNortherners are portrayed as morally weak abolimaking into a more serious endeavor. The cast tionists who allow White women to mingle with rehearsed for 6 weeks, and filming took 9 weeks. Black men and grant too much power to their African The editing took 3 months, and the resulting film American charges. As in the case of the Northern comprised over twelve reels, with a running time of Stillwell family, Black servants are depicted as overly more than 3 hours. confident and self-possessed. Northern permissiveThe film is said to be the first to use many film and ness about miscegenation is embodied in the insurrecediting techniques, among them the close-up, crosstionary mulatto Silas Lynch—whose very name cutting, rapid-fire editing, the iris, the split-screen inscribes the narrative mandate to eliminate him. shot, and both realistic and impressionistic lighting. Silas Lynch has self-confidence considered beyond These techniques enhanced the framing of realistic his lot, combined with all the features of racial degenimages and the production of a convincing and pereracy: rapaciousness, immorality, criminality, and suasive story about historical events. The film was moral and emotional instability. He embodies authenticated by Woodrow Wilson as “like writing anxieties about the potential revolutionary furor of history with lightning!” But rather than history, it the “mulattoes” who might incite racial unrest, like depicted a race-based ideology in which African the mixed-race leaders of the Haitian revolution. He
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might lead the growing population of enraged Blacks around him into civil disobedience. The most dramatic moment of the film is the attempted rape of a White woman by Gus, one of the militant Blacks. Rather than submit to his will, she throws herself off a cliff, preferring death over the touch of a Black man. Then, a group of men disguised in white sheets emerge out of nowhere to battle the Black rebels. These men who hide their faces are depicted as heroic saviors of a lost South and defenders of a nation. The Messa age
The Birth of a Nation sends the message that the only recourse for the South is to develop civic groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, to restore order and protect the Whites from further dispossession. The film not only documents the emergence of the Klan, but aids in the dissemination of its ideology of racial hatred. In fact, The Birth of a Nation continues to be used as a tool of Klan indoctrination. It paints a portrait of national politics in which the salvation of the United States lies in resurrecting the values of the fallen South. Masquerading as history, The Birth of a Nation actually dramatizes an ideology of racial division and hierarchy. Its depictions of African Americans tend to reflect pseudo-scientific ideas about racial mixing that circulated during the era of slavery. These ideas emanated from a biological argument called “hybrid degeneracy,” which emerged after the Civil War and continued to have social influence until the 1930s. According to the theory of hybrid degeneracy, racially mixed peoples are emotionally unstable, irrational, and biologically inferior to the “pure” races of their parents. These ideas held sway among people who believed that mixed-race peoples were the source of social unrest due to an unhappy combination of ambition and racial degeneracy.
Ongoing Impact The Birth of a Nation reinforced a certain racial ideology in the United States and has greatly influenced Hollywood filmmaking It promoted a social order in which races are divided in discrete categories and racial mixing and commingling is strictly forbidden both socially and legally. After the Civil War, Jim Crow laws were enacted to ensure segregation and the perpetuation of racism. Among these laws were the
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antimiscegenation laws that outlawed marriage between people of different races and denied rights of inheritance to their offspring. The ambiguity about the social role of mixed-race African Americans was removed by the rule of hypodescent, or the “one-drop rule,” that deemed anyone with any Black ancestry whatsoever to be African American. The fears about miscegenation were reflected in the Hollywood Production Code, which forbade the depiction of on-screen liaisons between people of different races. The Birth of a Nation provided the racist template for the representation of African Americans as villains or as serving in various ways to support a White protagonist (mammy, maid, servant), which has appeared throughout the history of Hollywood in different incarnations. Nonetheless, this film legacy is constantly under contestation and reconstruction. Many filmmakers who seek to represent African Americans in a nuanced and nonstereotypical manner must deal in some way with the long shadow of The Birth of a Nation. Camilla Fojas See also African Americans; Black Cinema; Emancipation Proclamation; Film, Latino; Intermarriage; Ku Klux Klan; Lee, Spike; Media and Race; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); One-Drop Rule; Popular Culture, Racism and; Slavery; White Racism
Further Readings
Anderson, Lisa M. 1997. Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bogle, Donald. 2004. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum International. Brown, Ursula M. 2001. The Interracial Experience: Growing Up Black/White Racially Mixed in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Guerrero, Ed. 1993. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lommel, Cookie. 2003. African Americans in Film and Television. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Valerie. 1997. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, edited by V. Smith. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
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Black Bourgeoisie
BLACK BOURGEOISIE From the origin of the Black bourgeoisie in the United States until the present, the intransigency of race and racism, along with social and economic shifts, has shaped the definition of who belongs to this upper stratum of Black society, its members’ stratification patterns within the Black community, and the relationship of its members to the dominant White society and the masses of Blacks. This dynamic racial pattern is evident in the historic development of the Black bourgeoisie from three periods: emancipation to 1915, 1915 to 1960, and 1960 to the present. That history and the current situation are reviewed in this entry.
Origins: Emancipation to 1915 Many scholars have traced the roots of the Black bourgeoisie to the distinctions that arose among the plantation slave communities and among free Blacks of the antebellum period. In slave communities, Blacks were divided into two general groups: house slaves and field slaves. The former were typically related to their White masters by kinship and occupation, and, as progenies of their masters and slave women, they were more likely to have greater privileges than field hands, who performed the more arduous physical outside labor under extremely adverse conditions. The accrued benefits and rewards of favored house servants included more material resources and creature comforts, such as access to better food and clothing and more skilled and semiskilled trades. In addition, the house slaves had more intimate contact with their masters and adopted their manners and styles. Hence, house slaves were more advantaged than the field hands in terms of the social capital required to acquire educational and economic opportunities after emancipation or to have a greater chance to purchase their freedom before emancipation. Free Blacks, many of whom were partly of White ancestry, were most crucial to the development of class distinctions within the Black community. As a means to acquiring wealth, free Blacks could purchase land and real estate in various urban areas of the North, like Boston and Philadelphia; in the upper South; and even in some places in the deep South, like New Orleans, Louisiana. They were also able to engage in labor as skilled artisans, working as barbers, caterers, and tailors serving a primarily White clientele. Free Blacks
also set up small businesses, worked as domestics, and, in a few cities like Boston, worked in the professions of ministry, teaching, law, and dentistry. In sum, during the antebellum period, the invidious distinctions of having White ancestry, owning property, having descended from free Blacks or house servants, and having engaged in occupations as skilled artisans or in a few professions became institutionalized as important differentiating characteristics of the Black bourgeoisie after emancipation. In addition, other criteria of prestige for entry into this class varied, depending on whether the Black elite lived in a rural or urban area or in the North or South. These criteria included respectability, a rigid code of morals and manners, education, lifestyle, occupation, income, organizational affiliation, leadership roles in church or school, cultural similarity to Whites, and status of employer. After th he War
During the late 19th century, postemancipation Black elites developed a separate community and style of life in the urban areas of the North and South, apart from the Black masses, whom they often regarded with contempt. Accordingly, they established their own churches, schools, colleges, and social clubs, as well as their own fulsome lifestyle of entertaining. While extricating themselves from the Black masses, members of the Black bourgeoisie desired to emulate the manners and social customs of upper-class Whites and to cultivate the paternalistic relationship fostered during the antebellum period. One key explanation for their behavior was economic: They derived their livelihood from wealthy White patrons, serving the needs of this class while working as barbers, caterers, and craftsmen. In the South, the color line was more rigid, but in the North, Blacks could live in the same neighborhoods and attend the same schools and churches as Whites. Whether members of the Black bourgeoisie lived in the North, in the upper South, or in the Deep South, having a relationship with upper-class Whites for economic gain or with White missionaries from the North might also have afforded them an opportunity for literacy, the chance to obtain an education at one of the historically Black institutions, or even the prospect of acquiring an education at one of the Ivy League schools, like Harvard, which would thus enable them to pursue careers as teachers in the Black community. With the exception of teachers and ministers, few
Black Bourgeoisie
Black professional occupations existed during this period because most were considered by Whites as inappropriate for Blacks. Lawyers were particularly discouraged because of the adversarial nature of the occupation. However, with the establishment of Black institutions, such as Howard University and Meharry Medical College, Black doctors and dentists eventually came to the South. A New Centu ury
In the early 20th century, the socioeconomic milieu of the postemancipation era Black bourgeoisie began to shift. In the North, for instance, as Black barbers, caterers, and craftsmen encountered competition from White immigrants, they were forced out of their trades, so they never gained a foothold in the economy of the North as did southern Blacks. With increased competition from White immigrant groups and mounting racial tensions, including the rise of violent vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the old paternalistic ties that the upper-class Whites had sustained with the Black elite began to loosen, and their status was threatened. Along with the heightened racial tension, major changes such as industrialization, World War I, the migration of Blacks to cities in the urban North and South, and greater opportunities for Black professionals forced many members of the Black elite of the postemancipation era to give up hopes of separating themselves from the Black masses and aligning themselves with the larger community. It should be noted that in the emancipation era and on into the early 20th century, some Black leaders, particularly religious ones, stressed the role and responsibility of the Black elite to uplift the race. The largely mulatto elite that emerged during emancipation lasted until about 1915. Bart Landry referred to this era’s elite as a “status group,” since its members emerged from the subjective evaluation of the community, as opposed to objective criteria of income, education, and occupation.
Expansion: 1915–1960 In addition to the aforementioned factors that contributed to the expansion of the Black middle class from 1915 through 1960, it is important to cite the 1924 National Origins Act, which restricted the immigration of eastern and southern Europeans, and the role it played in the growth of the Black bourgeoisie.
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As the flow of White immigrants from these regions came to a virtual halt, White industrialists who had favored White laborers began to recruit Black workers from the South. Thousands of Blacks left the South to work in industrial enterprises in the North and West and also to escape the most virulent racism. For the first time, masses of Blacks had an opportunity for industrial employment and a chance to gain a toehold on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, where they could improve their life chances with steady although low-paying jobs. Racism continued to constrain the lives of Blacks as they settled in separate enclaves in urban centers. Yet these Black communities provided opportunities for the development of entrepreneurs, teachers, doctors, preachers, lawyers, nurses, and social workers, along with the development of parallel institutions, such as the Black press and Black colleges, serving the Black community. Even in the public service sectors, except for postal clerks or carriers in the North, Blacks were excluded from clerical and sales jobs until World War II. Traditionally, these white-collar jobs served as a means of upward mobility. Hence, unlike members of the old mulatto elite, who were more dependent on patronage of the White upper class, Black elites of this era were more dependent on Black patronage. The growth of Black institutions of higher education during this period also contributed to expansion of the Black bourgeoisie. These changes led to a new class formation based on education, income, and occupation rather than family background or skin color. In particular, education was viewed as an important avenue of upward individual and collective mobility and as the major criterion of prestige, more so than occupation or income, for entrance into the upper class. Being a waiter, caterer, or artisan was losing its prestige in this era. Although skin color, as well as family background, was still important, a greater differentiation in shades existed because members of the old mulatto elite began losing their social status and started intermarrying with darker-skinned men of the upper class. Behind the segregated walls of their community, the Black elite developed a distinct social life centered on home and social organizations. In cities like Chicago; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis; New York City; Atlanta; Memphis; Detroit; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Tuskegee; and Nashville, where a large middle class developed, they protected themselves from the onslaught of racial discrimination and contact with the masses by having separate vacation spots and
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beaches, social and civic clubs, cotillions, and lavish parties, as well as camps and organizations for their children. In Black Bourgeoisie, E. Franklin Frazier castigated this segment of the Black society for its preoccupation with conspicuous consumption and for living in a world of make-believe. The Black elite could not, however, maintain too much distance between themselves and the Black masses, because their fates were inextricably connected, so its leaders established benevolent organizations to aid the poor and organizations to advance and uplift the race, which resulted in milestone legislative victories. These race leaders, along with the pool of educated Blacks and working-class masses, were a part of the changing landscape that set in motion the Civil Rights Movement and the expansion of opportunities beyond the segregated walls.
Increasing Opportunity: 1960–Present The Civil Rights Movement, the public policy priority of equal opportunity, and an expanding economy knocked down legal racial restrictions in public accommodations, in housing, in education, in voting, in marriage, and in employment. Thousands of gifted young Blacks broke open the segregated door to opportunities in the 1960s and 1970s and slipped through the cracks in the White higher-education academy and in corporate America. They arrived at the door of opportunity from the cotton belt of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, from the coal fields of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, and from the burned-out urban communities of Watts, Harlem, Detroit, and Newark. They were the offspring of parents and grandparents who tilled the soil as sharecroppers, scrubbed the floors as domestics and janitors, and generally performed the dirty work. They were also the children of doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. The Black elite’s traditional career choices— teaching, ministry, and the selected few occupations of medicine, dentistry, and law in racially segregated communities—expanded to more racially diverse settings with greater occupational differentiation. Blacks are active in elected politics and hold appointed positions in high places in the public and private sectors. Black individuals once traded as commodities are now on Wall Street working as traders, analysts, asset managers, and investment bankers. They are buying seats on the New York Stock exchange and are CEOs of some of the nation’s leading financial firms, such
as American Express. Two Black billionaires have appeared on the list of the Forbes 500, and a substantial number of entrepreneurs and entertainers— including athletes, actors, and rappers—are millionaires. The growing Black elite has led some scholars to conclude that racism is disappearing. Although the color line may be more covert and subtle in this era, however, racism still shapes the life chances of the Black elite. Even rich Blacks do not have as much wealth as rich Whites; and there are more likely to be two or more working people in their households. In addition, they still have to deal with housing discrimination and racial profiling. One concerning aspect of the younger generations of the Black elite—those born in the post–civil rights era—is that many individuals have never experienced the overt racism of the past and have no collective memory of the history and heritage of group struggle that is necessary for continued Black upward mobility. Hence, the older generations of the Black bourgeoisie are apprehensive about the growing generational divide and the increasing divide between the Black “haves” and the “have-nots.” Lois Benjamin See also Assimilation; Black Enterprise; Black Intellectuals; Declining Significance of Race, The; Frazier, E. Franklin; Ku Klux Klan; National Origins System; Racism; Wealth
Further Readings
Benjamin, Lois. 2005. The Black Elite: Still Facing the Color Line in the Twenty-first Century. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1964. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1963. Black Bourgeoisie. New York: Free Press. Landry, Bart. 1987. The New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moore, Jacqueline M. 1999. Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital, 1880–1920. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
BLACK CINEMA The term Black cinema refers to the work of African American filmmakers, writers, producers, and
Black Cinema
creators of exhibition venues. While that work is of relatively recent vintage, Black characters and Black actors have a history that goes back to the very beginnings of film. In 1889, Thomas Edison invented the motion picture technology of the kinetoscope, and the first motion picture was screened in 1903. The same year, Edwin S. Porter made the 12-minute reel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which featured the first African American character of film, Uncle Tom, played by a White man in blackface. A year later, in 1904, Biograph, one of the early studios, released the onereel feature A Bucket of Cream Ale, which depicted an African American maid and her White boss. The origins of cinema reflect and perpetuate the conflicted history of African Americans in the United States, a history that has enslavement and brutality at its origins. Yet African Americans have been involved in the film industry from its inception, sometimes taking on the only roles available—as servants, maids, and mammies—and sometimes finding space to challenge stereotypes and forge new kinds of representations. This entry records that history.
Early Hollywood In the early years of Hollywood, the representation of African Americans descended from theatrical representations that themselves were reflections of negative attitudes derived from a system of slavery. Enslaved Africans were representational scapegoats who allowed the White man to further his superiority. Though Blacks were represented on film and archived in U.S. history, their visibility came at the expense of their humanity and integrity. In fact, in the early years of cinema, as in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, many of the roles for Blacks were played by Whites in blackface playing out their racial phobias in comic depictions of Blacks. Donald Bogle has described the representation of African Americans in U.S. cinema as the preserve of the “coon, the tragic mulatto, the mammy, and the brutal Black buck,” in short, all characters designed to bolster the representational superiority of the Whites and entertain with the inferiority of the Blacks. The archive of racial representations on film documents the racism of Hollywood, providing visual evidence of a history of racial mistreatment that might otherwise be lost and forgotten. The Birth of a Nation is considered the first feature film and the earliest exemplar of the art of filmmaking; however, it also chronicles the institutionalization of racism in
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Hollywood. It is an archive of the fears of White Americans about African American emancipation and sexual contact with White women, fears that shaped subsequent representations of African Americans. At the time, many saw The Birth of a Nation as the historical truth about African Americans, whereas today, the film is generally understood within its ideological context, as presenting White fears about the emancipation of a brutally subjugated people. Black cinema continually refers back to this origin story of Black representation, one that is founded in stereotype and has produced the major types and figures of Black media representation. Black cinema emerges from divergent cinematic histories, one represented by The Birth of a Nation and other films of the era, like The Wooing and the Wedding of a Coon (1905), and another tradition that contests this legacy of subjugation and stereotype. These two poles represent a constant struggle in the cinematic representation of African Americans.
Change Begins Prior to World War II, a movement began in Chicago to produce “race films” as a critical reaction to the bad publicity of films like The Birth of a Nation. These films, made for and about African Americans, were intended to promote and support Black arts and the Black community. Often, they were made by interracial or even White-owned companies that knew that a market existed for these films. Race films never enjoyed wide circulation at the time of their release; they were shown late at night and restricted to a Black audience, coinciding with the consolidation of an urban Black audience. The most popular filmmakers were Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams; they remain icons of Black filmmakers for critical African American cinema. These filmmakers offered opportunities for Black performers to play roles other than the mammy and servant roles typical of Hollywood. After World War II, Hollywood gained a critical awareness about race and prejudice and promoted story lines about racial tolerance and an egalitarian civil society. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) and Imitation of Life (1959) were examples of a reconstructed image of African Americans. In 1954, Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Carmen Jones, but the first Academy Award for a Black actor went to Sidney Poitier for his role in Lilies of the Field in 1963. The
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Black Cinema
first Oscar for an African American lead actress went to Halle Berry in 2002. By the 1960s, the roles of African Americans began to reflect the new political visibility for peoples of color wrought during the civil rights era. After the major events of mass protest by African Americans and their supporters—including the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, the March on Washington in 1963, the Watts rebellion of 1965, and the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—the landscape of U.S. popular culture had changed irrevocably. It was no longer possible for Hollywood to display racist images of African Americans, nor was it possible to deny the need for representation of African Americans in all aspects of the film industry. By the 1970s, Black cinema entered an entirely different playing field with the rise of blaxploitation films, made on the quick for little money and with an eye for maximum profit. These films were characterized by urban narratives of Black revenge against White men, where Black characters were central and successfully won out over the oppressive White characters, for example, Shaft (1971), Superfly (1972), and Black Caesar (1973). One of the major stars of blaxploitation was Pam Grier, whose tough, no-holdsbarred persona in films like Coffy, Sheba, Baby, and Foxy Brown made her an icon for the feminist movement and landed her on the cover of Ms. Magazine. The representational field of blaxploitation was far from perfect, however. These films depicted African Americans as abjectly physical, brutal, and sensual and prone to crime, drug abuse, and treachery. Nonetheless, Donald Bogle argued that blaxploitation inaugurated the representation of the sexually assertive Black male who is sensual without reverting to the stereotypes of Black rapaciousness that originated with The Birth of a Nation. By the 1980s, Hollywood film in general had entered a period of conservativism and backlash to the gains of the civil rights era. Black filmmakers and performers were faced with an atmosphere of backlash politics that made it difficult to express views alternative to the mainstream. The 1980s was the era of the Black comedian—Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and Eddie Murphy—and the rise of roles for African Americans as the lead in comedies. One such example would be Eddie Murphy’s role in 48 Hours. Film critic Ed Guerrero has called this the era of the “biracial buddy” movie, in which African American male leads were accompanied by a White counterpart.
The New Wave By the 1990s, a new wave of African American filmmaking was headed by directors like Spike Lee, Charles Burnett, Ernest Dickerson, Bill Duke, Robert Townsend, Julie Dash, and others, causing yet another major innovation in the history of Black film. These filmmakers were concerned with stories that were written, directed, and aimed at Black audiences. They led the way for the rise of the Black film mainstream of the 1990s, in which African Americans took on lead roles across various genres, including urban genres that foreground issues for African Americans in the inner city. Contemporary Black filmmaking has inherited the legacy of Hollywood, and many filmmakers work to create images that decolonize the images of mainstream culture or that deeply contest prevailing stereotypes. The issues and problems for African Americans in film have opened up discourses about representation and the role and function of visual discourses in racial attitudes. The future of Black filmmaking promises new possibilities for nuanced representations of African Americans. Camilla Fojas See also African Americans; Birth of a Nation, The; Film, Latino; Lee, Spike; Media and Race; Popular Culture, Racism and
Further Readings
Anderson, Lisa M. 1997. Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bogle, Donald. 2004. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum International. Guerrero, Ed. 1993. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Jones, G. William. 1991. Black Cinema Treasures Lost and Found. Denton: University of North Texas Press. Lommel, Cookie. 2003. African Americans in Film and Television. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Valerie. 1997. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, edited by V. Smith. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Black Conservatives
Wilson, Clint and Félix Gutiérrez. 1995. Race, Multiculturalism, and the Media: From Mass to Class Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
BLACK CONSERVATIVES A story has made the rounds for many years about the Englishman who, when told of the existence of Black conservatives in the United States, responded with the quip, “What do they have to conserve?” He may have been correct with respect to how the term conserve is commonly understood; however, he was far off the mark regarding the outlook on life the term has come to express politically and culturally. A cursory reading of the speeches by Blacks from many walks of life, beginning in the late 18th century, reveals themes related to a quest for racial and social equality as well as bold statements expressing the need for political and economic self- and group help. This entry traces the history of Black conservative thought and presents current expressions in that context.
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Early Conservative Thinkers The idea of individual and group self-help has a long history among Black thinkers. Richard Allen, William Highland Garnett, Dr. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and later Booker T. Washington were among those who adopted the view that the very survival of Blacks would hinge on their ability to advance themselves through both individual and group self-help. That seemed the only sane view to adopt given the racism, brutal treatment, and general neglect of Blacks by Whites at the national, state, and local levels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These men knew they could not rely on governmental largesse to assist them; thus, their summation of what they needed to do was a matter of practical, commonsense logic. Fred derick Douglass
Frederick Douglass enunciated a more elaborate view of the world of work for Blacks by proffering the need for vocational and skilled training in order to offset the growing job competition from the increasing flow of immigrants from Europe in the mid-19th century. Seeing the immigrant threat, Douglass was the first Black leader to tilt the scale for Blacks slightly away from the struggle for the vote and civil rights toward an emphasis on work, vocational, and skills training. But Douglass was speaking mainly of Blacks, and to Blacks north of the Mason-Dixon Line, not newly freed Blacks currently behind the “cotton curtain” in the South. That is, he spoke for and to Blacks who, living in the North, were technically free and had the ballot; hence, there was no need to emphasize that point. Booker T. Washington
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Prominent African Americans who speak out on issues involving race attract public scrutiny, but this is particularly true for those who endorse more conservative views. Thomas’s nomination in 1991 threw traditional political loyalties into disarray. The NAACP’s and Congressional Black Caucus’s desire to see a Black justice on the Supreme Court competed with their disapproval of Thomas’s conservative views. Source: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.
After Douglass died, Booker T. Washington became the leader whose ideas are now associated with conservative thought. He basically continued Douglass’s theme of the orientation to work, vocational skills, and practical training as necessary tools for Black success. Whereas Douglass could have but did not overemphasize the struggle for the ballot and civil rights, however, Washington, headquartered in Tuskegee, Alabama, and holding the position of group leader during the height of Ku Klux Klan lynchings and the creation of Jim Crow laws designed to deny the ballot to Blacks, had to walk a narrow line. For this reason, he believed he had to de-emphasize the ballot as an immediate goal and relegate it to a distant and future objective.
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Black Conservatives
What made Washington’s strategy conservative was its appearance of maintaining the antebellum racial etiquette and of abandoning the victories won and group assumptions maintained during Reconstruction. However, Washington was simply acting within the structure created by the Compromise of 1877, which reestablished southern White political, economic, and social control over the Black population. He believed his strategy would protect Blacks from terror and violence in the South and place Blacks on the road to economic and social interdependency with Whites. Washington engaged in a bitter battle over group tactics and strategy with W. E. B. Du Bois, a young intellectual educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities and the University of Berlin. In the end, Washington was given the label, sometimes an epithet, of conservative. The negative attitude toward Washington was related not to the idea of individual and group selfhelp, but to the soft-peddling of civil rights and rightto-vote issues, plus his emphasis on low-level manual labor and vocational education. Thus, the association of vocational education, manual labor, the softpeddling of racial issues, and the relegation of the vote to the future, “when the time was right,” all combined to place Washington in the conservative camp. Returning to the statement of the uninformed Englishman, it can be seen that what is often viewed as conservatism by others, White or Black, has little or nothing to do with the idea of conserving anything. As was the case with both Douglass and Washington, the self-help thesis has more to do with the existing social, political, and economic realities Blacks had to confront at the time, not as theory or ideology, but as survival tactics and strategies. This may be seen in the Washington-created Negro Business League (1900), farmer associations, and a host of other organizations Washington founded to foster self-help among Blacks, in the North and the South. The ultimate irony was that Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was kicked out of the organization in 1935 because during the Great Depression, he abandoned his quest for integration in favor of a Washington-style, all-Black self-help collective called the “Black Economic Commonwealth.” Marcus Garvey
After Washington’s death in 1915, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association emerged as the next national Black economic self-help movement.
Garvey had heard of Washington and came to the United States from Jamaica in order to work with him. His back to Africa, pan-African nationalism conflicted with Du Bois’s nationalism in that Garvey’s movement was exclusively for Blacks, whereas Du Bois was an advocate of racial integration. As was Washington’s group, Garvey’s was all-Black, but by ideology and design, whereas Washington’s self-help strategy, located in the turbulent and increasingly segregated South, had no alternative to being all-Black. In the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, the Nation of Islam reached its peak in membership and economic success. Like the strategies of its heroes, Washington and Garvey, the group was a minority religious movement and focused mainly on economic self-help. Like both Washington’s and Garvey’s strategies, it did not concentrate on voting. Rather, like Garvey, it did not view Blacks as citizens of the United States and disparaged voting among Blacks.
Contemporary Conservatism In the 1950s and 1960s, George Schuyler emerged as one of the first Black conservatives in the country. He had worked with the NAACP but became disillusioned and later denounced the group, as well as the entire Civil Rights Movement. He opposed the idea of civil disobedience and denounced the Black leadership of the time, especially Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he denounced as a racial agitator beholden to communists and socialists. Schuyler was unashamedly pro-American and pro-capitalist and believed that national Black mutual aid consumer cooperatives would do much to alleviate the economic problems confronting Blacks. Socia al Contex xt and Min nd-S Set
In his autobiography, Schuyler provided acute insights into the making of his conservative mind-set, which may have relevance when viewing contemporary Black conservatives: His goals are to adjust, in order to survive and advance, to whatever changes might occur; to conserve, consolidate, and change when expedient; and to take things as they are and try to turn them to one’s advantage. Like Schuyler, contemporary thinkers who are labeled conservative, or even libertarian, have certain traits in common. Whereas White conservatives are often born into upper-middle-class or upper-class families, Black thinkers viewed as conservatives or libertarians tend to be from working-class families: bright
Black Elk (c. 1865–1950)
young men who have worked and studied hard to get into top colleges. In a way, they are like the models Washington held up to the young Blacks of his day: the Horatio Alger–style poor boys who rose to the top through hard work, thrift, sobriety, and religious values. Like Schuyler, today’s conservatives-libertarians are also critical of the Civil Rights Movement and the current Black leaders, whom conservatives believe are hindering rather than helping Blacks to prosper. Like Washington and Schuyler, Black conservatives address more of their criticism toward the Black population than toward the White population. Like Schuyler, these current Black thinkers do not suggest the demise of racism; they simply suggest, as Schuyler does, “It’s here, we know it’s here, so don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. Get your personal life together so as to overcome it.” Black conservatives tend to oppose race-based policies in education and employment. Unlike Washington, but like Schuyler, contemporary conservativeslibertarians are ideologically driven by opposition to liberalism and enumerate, with a nod to the Englishman, things they wish to conserve: the sense of community in the 1950s and early 1960s; the respect once shown by the young toward their elders; and the love of learning that was once a key value in Black communities, especially in well-known public high schools with a tradition of graduating students who then went on to colleges and universities. They also hark back to Washington’s views on vocational education and skilled labor and self-help and in some ways suggest, like Du Bois, that group success is possible when the individual “will” to succeed combines with the “will” to succeed of the group. Beccomin ng Outccasts
Like Douglass, Washington, Schuyler, and even Du Bois before them, these contemporary thinkers appear to denounce the behavior of Blacks and refuse to accept a common liberal view that Blacks fail because Whites won’t let them succeed or simply because the system is stacked against them. Given their working-class backgrounds and considering the heights to which they have risen, it is easy to understand how these African American conservative thinkers could believe that Blacks can succeed despite the racial obstacles placed before them, a view touted repeatedly by Schuyler in his autobiography. Black conservatives may often appear to be estranged from the African American community because they’ve personally and collectively made
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little effort to change their image; they seem to become public only when they are quoted making statements against Blacks and Black communities. Some Blacks might actually agree with some of the positions enunciated by these conservative thinkers, but they disassociate themselves from these thinkers because their views toward Blacks are often presented in a strident manner. At the same time, Black conservatives are seen as resisting overt statements against White racism, which they generally do believe to exist. Contemporary conservatives-libertarians oppose the involvement of big government in the affairs of citizens, an idea that has received a mixed response. Many Blacks find it hard to view the government as an obstacle, or the enemy, when it is this very government that has forced many long-existing societal racial policies to change. Conservative thinkers argue that if people expect less of governments, they will do more for themselves. Rutledge M. Dennis See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Douglass, Frederick; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Social Darwinism; Washington, Booker T.
Further Readings
Cunnigen, Donald, Rutledge M. Dennis, and Myrtle Gonza Glascoe. 2006. The Racial Politics of Booker T. Washington. Amsterdam: Elsevier Press. Eisenstadt, Peter. 1999. Black Conservatism. New York: Garland. Faryna, Stan, Brad Stetson, and Joseph Conti. 1997. Black and Right. Westport, CT: Praeger. Schuyler, George. 1966. Black and Conservative. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. Woodson, Carter. [1925] 1969. Negro Orators and Their Orations. New York: Russell & Russell.
BLACK ELK (C. 1865–1950) Born along the Powder River of Wyoming in July (c. 1865), Black Elk became well-known internationally a century later. Black Elk Speaks, his biography, was published in 1932, but it received little attention until the 1960s. At that time, it was translated into a
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dozen languages, awakened sympathy for the plight of American Indians, and contributed to a growing interest in ecological concerns. Variously referred to as a “bible” for all tribes and the hippie movement, this Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (the book’s subtitle) also moved many readers to explore the religious universe that he so eloquently represented. In a later publication, the transcripts that formed the basis for the biography were also published, raising some interesting questions about the completeness and accuracy of the popular portrayal. This entry discusses the works about Black Elk and the person revealed in the transcripts.
Recalling an Earlier Time Black Elk’s “life story” became the most popular portrayal of American Indian life. It swept readers into a 19th-century Native world that predated the coming of settlers. The holy man poignantly recalled a childhood that saw his people defeat Custer at Little Big Horn but eventually accept confinement to reservations. His biography was a sad one that told of slaughtered buffaloes and massacred friends. It made him a preeminent spokesman for a golden-age environment that had tragically vanished along with many of his people. Concluding with a prayer of hope to the “Great Spirit,” Black Elk Speaks inspired many readers to seek out other defining voices from Indian America. The social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s produced an attentive audience for Black Elk’s vision of spiritual and cultural renewal. The holy man’s image was bolstered by another work that likewise experienced rebirth. Published in 1953 and often reprinted after 1971, The Sacred Pipe was subtitled Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. This volume presented the holy man’s detailed description of Lakota religious practice as it existed before the reservation period. The Sacred Pipe portrayed Black Elk as a very devout man whose religion had been wrenched from his life along with everything else he held dear. Over time, he became the paradigmatic spokesman for all Native wisdom keepers. Since the publication of these seminal works, numerous Indian biographies have tried, but fallen short of, casting the same appeal.
Another View The transcripts that served as the wellspring of Black Elk’s “life story” were published in 1984, for example,
in The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. In this work, the Neihardt portrait contained significant omissions related to Black Elk’s worldview. The transcripts also raised questions about the holy man’s theology as a whole. This concern was addressed in Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala. It depicted the vivid memory that Black Elk bequeathed to those who knew him from everyday life on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota where he lived. These Native contributors revealed that the early Black Elk books misrepresented the holy man’s life and thought. Notably, his daughter expressed a concern that the books did not address what she said was her father’s most significant legacy. The “life story” rightly showed that Black Elk experienced a dark night of the soul. However, new forms of religious involvement dispelled this anguish and occupied him until his death on August 17, 1950. Holy Man revealed that the 25 years addressed in Black Elk Speaks were by no means his only experience of happiness or sense of mission. Beginning where the “life story” ended, Holy Man described Black Elk’s discouragement in the years after the Wounded Knee conflict of 1890. However, his spirit rallied upon meeting a Jesuit priest, receiving religious instruction from him, and being baptized “Nicholas William Black Elk,” on December 6, 1904. From that time until his death, he was an ardent Catholic, referred to by everyone as “Nick.” He was seldom, if ever, addressed as “Black Elk,” which his biographer had made a household name. Learning of the holy man’s Catholic involvement was a surprise to many, since he had become an icon for the pan-Indian revitalization movement, in which traditional Native practices played a prominent role. Holy Man showed that Black Elk was not the tearful traditionalist that had become his stereotype. It indicated that his popularity as a literary figure was not widely known among residents of his reservation. Rather, for them, he was a much-respected elder who served in the role of fervent Christian layman. Holding the office of catechist (one who helped priests instruct and care for the faithful), Black Elk was like many others from his generation, who were somehow able to internalize religious teachings that to others seemed oppressively invasive. Testimonials from those who knew him insisted that he admirably lived the Christian precepts he was taught. As a result, teachings that once were thought to be quintessentially “Indian” emanated from a
Black Enterprise
Christian faith that Black Elk had built upon his Native tradition. His personality was, moreover, not that of a solemn ascetic, but of one who could bring laughter to an assembly. The holy man’s good-natured disposition and sense of humor were as much a part of his personality as was the serious and sober spirituality imparted to audiences in the previous books. Critics of a Christianized Black Elk challenged this revised portrait. Some sought to show that his institutional practice was a pragmatic (and not sincere) adaptation to changing times. Others asserted that he eventually abandoned Christian involvement and returned to the more satisfying traditions of his youth. The holy man’s life will remain a rich topic of debate. It will also continue to influence Native and non-Native audiences who explore notions of the sacred, notions he acquired as medicine man, Christian missionary, and mystic holy man of the Oglala Sioux. Michael F. Steltenkamp See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Native Americans; Sioux
Further Readings
Brown, Joseph Epes. 1971. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books. De Mallie, Raymond J. 1984. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Neihardt, John G. 1972. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. New York: Pocket Book Edition. Steltenkamp, Michael F. 1993. Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
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The Historical Record From 1910 into the 1960s, the African American urban middle class worked almost exclusively in personal services as servants or were small entrepreneurs. The college-educated faction worked in segregated professions, serving the needs of other Black people, as preachers, physicians, and dentists. Within this context, Black-owned businesses, relative to White-owned businesses, were severely disadvantaged in their attempts to gain market share not only because they were barred from competing in the predominantly White economy but also because they operated in lowgrowth and no-growth market sectors and in communities with higher debt and less disposable income. African Americans seeking jobs in higher-paying white-collar occupations were similarly disadvantaged by hiring discrimination blatantly practiced by White corporations. Yet even under these conditions, African Americans broke racial barriers and became highly successful. John H. Johnson of Chicago started Johnson Publishing and Johnson Products, which remain among the top Black-owned businesses today. The limited opportunity structure on which the African American economy rested is not only a historical notation, but is significant because the dramatic alteration of this structure defines the nature of Black progress during the 1960s. That decade demarcates African Americans’ push for citizenship rights, and the old middle class became more broadly elaborated through entry into white-collar occupations and, particularly, into managerial and business-related occupations in the mainstream economy. Indeed, it is this juncture of movement into higher-paying occupations and White-dominated economic settings that delineates the “new” Black middle class of professionals, managers, and business owners in the 21st century. A Decade of Change
BLACK ENTERPRISE In the last half of the 20th century, the African American middle class of professionals and businesspeople experienced unprecedented gains within managerial and business-related occupations across all sectors of the economy. This entry examines the topic of Black enterprise broadly defined. It not only outlines entrepreneurial activity but also traces the evolution of the broader presence of the Black middle class in the business world from nascent to noteworthy.
Figure 1 tracks the proportion of Blacks and Whites with 4 or more years of college who were employed in managerial jobs nationwide between 1959 and 1973, illustrating that Blacks were virtually excluded from jobs in corporate management in 1959. Only about 6% of the non-White college-educated population were managers, compared with 19% of college-educated White men. The figure also illustrates that a big upward shift in the slope of the line for Blacks, but not for Whites, occurred between 1965 and 1967 and occurred again between about 1969 and
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Figure 1
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Proportion of Employed Black and White College Graduates in Managerial Jobs, 1959–1973
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unpublished tables.
1973, when about 18% of employed Black college graduates worked in management. The changing distribution of African Americans in the managerial and business-related professions can be accounted for in part by increasing levels of Black educational attainment. This upward trend in education can be seen in Figure 2, which shows the percentage by race of 24- to 29-year-olds who completed 4 or more years of college between 1959 and 1973. In addition, the change in Black economic opportunities can be accounted for by the development of government-sponsored antibias policies and intense public pressure on major employers during this time period. Comparing Figures 1 and 2 illustrates that increases in the percentage of Blacks with 4 or more years of college did not entirely parallel the employment trend. The percentage of Black college graduates increased about twofold between 1959 and 1973 but did not change as dramatically as the emergence of African Americans in managerial positions would have predicted if education alone had been a factor. Ordinarily, sizable rates of change do not occur within such brief time periods; change tends to be glacial. In particular, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs established by executive order in 1965 opened up higher-paying managerial and professional jobs to Blacks in the corporate sector. In a survey sample of historically Black colleges, Richard Freeman found that virtually no major White corporations made recruitment visits to Black institutions of higher learning before that time period. The lack of corporate on-campus visits meant that Black graduates were excluded from a major recruitment pipeline for entry-level corporate positions in management. In 1965, visits by White corporations to Black college campuses began to increase, and, by the end of the decade, the number of White corporations conducting employee searches at predominantly Black colleges jumped dramatically. In 1970, the average Black college campus received visits from about 300 recruiters from various firms. The very same colleges shunned by corporate recruiters before 1965 became a highly desirable resource for Black labor by 1970 due to the push of federal policies. Incre easin ng Opporttunitie es
Surveys by the U.S. Department of Commerce indicate that greater opportunities for Black business owners also grew in this time period as their ability to compete in traditionally White-dominated
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Percentage of People Over 24 Who Have Completed College, by Race, 1959–1973
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Series P-19 and P-20, along with unpublished data from the Current Population Survey.
market sectors grew due to new government programs. Earl Graves, founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, used a $175,000 smallbusiness loan to build the magazine. Comparing overall gross receipts of all U.S. firms with minorityowned firms between 1969 and 1977 indicates that minority business revenue grew by 57% between 1969 and 1972 and nearly doubled between 1972 and 1977; majority firms’ gross receipts increased by 24.5% between 1969 and 1972 and increased 47% between 1972 and 1977. Moreover, the Blackowned proportion of firms increased in almost every industry, as did the Black percentage of all firms’ gross receipts. New opportunities for Black entrepreneurs evolved in tandem with federal “8(a)” and corporate programs designed to open their respective markets to Black-owned businesses. Federal procurement from predominately Black minority businesses in fiscal year 1969 amounted to only 0.03% of total dollar awards. In 1969, President Richard Nixon established the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, and that
figure increased to 0.08% of total contracts by 1973. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created the Interagency Council for Minority Business Enterprise to coordinate federal purchases from minority businesses. From 1977 through 1980, the dollar amount of purchases from minority businesses nearly tripled. Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce show that the amount of goods and services sold by minority firms to federal agencies increased from $3 million in 1969 to $3 billion in 1980. Expanded government and corporate supplier diversity programs have enabled minority firms to increase their revenue by about 10% annually and to realize a growth rate triple that of traditional businesses between 1980 and 2000. The new employment of African Americans in corporate jobs served as a backdrop for Black business start-ups in new and previously White-dominated market arenas, such as management consulting and human resource development, public relations and advertising fields, and manufacturing and new fields of retail. Corporations followed the federal
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government’s lead after racial unrest in the late 1960s by developing a private sector version of federal contract set-aside programs. In the automotive sector, General Motors launched the first minority supplier development program in 1968. Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation also began minority supplier programs in this period. General Motors started the first minority dealer development program in 1972, and three of these initial businesses were featured in Black Enterprise’s list of the largest 100 Black-owned U.S. businesses. Fortune 500 consumer goods companies, such as Pepsi-Co, Baxter Travenol, Frito Lay, and Burger King also created models for minority business development in the 1980s. These programs, like others, were driven by political and public relations pressures but also by the growing recognition of new targeted-marketing opportunities in minority communities.
Today’s Market Black entrepreneurship is still constrained within segregated markets, although Black entrepreneurs operating in White arenas are more visible. A strong growth area for Black-owned business outside of Black consumer markets is Black-oriented advertising, marketing, and workforce development specialties offered to White institutions. Still, Black entrepreneurs have broken through racial barriers at the high end as owners of highly successful investment banks, mutual funds, capital management businesses, and real estate and as moguls in the entertainment industry. Salaried Blacks in the private sector also show elements of functional segregation. Compared with White executives, Black executives are more concentrated in public relations specialties and personnel areas typically responsible for affirmative action plans and diversity. Sharon Collins’s study of Black executive careers shows Black executives in Chicago disproportionately filled personnel jobs that typically do not lead to the upper echelons of the corporate structure. Yet a small but highly visible set of African Americans emerged in powerful corporate functions such as chief financial officers and division presidents and, most dramatically, as heads of some of the United States’ largest and most powerful corporations. The gains African Americans made in the business world during the last half of the 20th century are both real and significant. At the same time, focusing solely on attainment may not tell the full story of the post–civil rights period. Whether and how African
Americans continue to move into the higher-paying and power-wielding business occupations developing in the 21st century remains an unfolding story. Sharon M. Collins See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Black Bourgeoisie; Black Conservatives; Black Intellectuals; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; FUBU Company; Glass Ceiling; Institutional Discrimination
Further Readings
Bates, Timothy and William Bradford. 2003. Minorities and Venture Capital—A New Wave in American Business. Kansas City, MO: Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Collins, Sharon M. 1997. Black Corporate Executives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Drake, St. Clair and Horace R. Cayton. 1962. Black Metropolis, vol. 2. New York: Harper & Row. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1957. The Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class. New York: Free Press. Freeman, Richard. 1976. The Black Elite. New York: McGraw-Hill. U.S. Department of Commerce. 1978. The New Strategy for Minority Businesses and Minority Business Enterprise Development in the 1980s. Washington, DC: Author.
BLACKFEET The Blackfeet of Montana are one of the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Siksika (Blackfoot), Piikani (North Piikani), and Blood (Kainai) tribes located in southern Alberta, Canada. The Blackfeet currently reside on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation located in north-central Montana. The 1.5-million-acre reservation is located on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, adjacent to Glacier National Park. The northern boundary is the international border between Montana and the Province of Alberta, Canada. American Indians have been stereotyped as a vanishing people, and historic literature depicts them as uncivilized and ignorant. This entry provides an introductory historic outline of the Blackfeet Indians, who sustain a vibrant culture.
Beginnings Like most Indigenous Peoples of North American, the Blackfeet have a genesis narrative. These accounts
Blackfeet
reveal that the creator of humankind originated the first human Napi from mud brought forth by a water animal from the depths of a watery abyss. These narratives then lead to other origin accounts that reveal the origins of Blackfeet ceremony and spiritual beliefs. According to anthropologists, the Blackfeet are classified linguistically and culturally with the Algonquian group of Indigenous Peoples of North America. It is believed that they migrated from the Great Lakes area to western prairies of what are now the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. The traditional roaming area of the Blackfeet is an area the size of France. The Blackfeet hunted animals and gathered roots and berries, ranging from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to the Yellowstone River in the south. The Rocky Mountains provided a barrier to other tribes to the west, while the plains of Saskatchewan and North Dakota and South Dakota formed a movable boundary to the east. Before the coming of Europeans, the Blackfeet lived in small groups commonly termed bands. The bands consisted of 50 to 100 people, mostly of extended families. They lived in a tepee lodge that included 10 to 15 members of an extended family. The band leaders were usually one or two headmen who had obtained prominence through personal influence, hunting skills, and participation in societies and ceremonial life. The bands also consisted of several social and ceremonial groups commonly termed societies, which were age graded: People entered a society such as the “mosquitoes” as teenagers and then moved into soldier or police societies such as the “brave dog” as young men and women. Toward middle age, the members ritually transferred into the more religious societies of “medicine bundle” or “beaver bundle.” Individuals could become ceremonial leaders such as a “bundle keeper” through an intricate ritualistic process. The spiritual life of the Blackfeet centered on the medicine bundle ceremonies. The medicine bundles contained things such as animals and birds and other objects such as rocks and sticks that have spiritual meaning. The medicine lodge, sometimes called the “sun dance,” was the ultimate ceremony of the Blackfeet tribes. In fact, the many bands and tribes came together as large groups only in the summer for the Ookaan, or medicine lodge ceremonies. Prior to the arrival of the horse in the mid-1700s, the Blackfeet used the domesticated dog as a way of transporting material goods. Later, the horse became the means of transportation. It is believed that the horse came to the Blackfeet either through the Mandan-Hidatsa
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tribe, on the Missouri River, or the Nez Perce tribe, west of the Rocky Mountains. Having horses not only made them more mobile but also improved their ability to harvest buffalo by way of surround and chase. Certainly, material goods in their possession increased, since larger amounts of goods could be transported. The economy of the Blackfeet centered on the buffalo (bison) as the primary food source. This staple was supplemented with roots and berries. During the “dog days,” the Blackfeet lured and chased the buffalo over large hill cliffs, where they fell to their deaths. The Blackfeet also utilized a variety of game animals, such as elk and deer, for sources of food. The Blackfeet lived in conical, tentlike lodges consisting of tanned buffalo hides stretched over a frame of lodgepole pines. Evidence of the Plains Indian lodges is scattered across the western prairies in the circles of rocks that were used to hold down the inside lining of the tepee tent. Clothing of the Blackfeet consisted mainly of tanned deer hide, but other animal hides, such as elk or buffalo, were also used. The buckskin clothing was decorated with intricate colored designs using dyed porcupine quills flattened and woven.
Europeans Arrive With the development of Fort Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan River in the late 1700s, the Blackfeet, or South Peigan, began visiting for trading purposes. In fact, obtaining rifles and whiskey as trade goods in return for buffalo and other animal hides became prominent. History records that Captain Meriwether Lewis had contact with the Blackfeet in 1806 on the return trip from his historic overland trek to the Pacific Ocean. Traveling east down the Missouri River, Lewis went up the Marias River and then to Cut Bank Creek, where his party encountered some Blackfeet Indians. Lewis and his party of a few men were somewhat anxious as they had heard stories of the supposedly treacherous Blackfeet. After communicating with these Natives by way of sign language, Lewis and his men camped for the night with them near the Two Medicine Creek. Early the next morning, a scuffle broke out when some of the Blackfeet were attempting to capture some of the Lewis party’s horses and guns. After killing two of the Blackfeet, the Lewis group rapidly escaped east through the prairie lands. The westward fur trapping and trade created a wave of unstoppable entrepreneurs up the Missouri River. Up until about 1830, when the American Fur
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Company initiated Fort Union below the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers, the Blackfeet had successfully resisted trade with the Americans. In a matter of a few decades, however, a series of trading forts were established up the Missouri River into Blackfeet country as far as Fort Benton. The Blackfeet had begun to build a dependency upon the “White-man’s” trade goods, such as pots, pans, axes, awls, beads, and cloth materials, which made life somewhat easier. The use of alcohol as a major trade item began to influence the social and cultural mores that held the Blackfoot tribes and bands together. The sacred beaver, which had been previously protected, now became an item of barter. By 1855, when the Blackfeet signed their first treaty with the U.S. government, the social and economic situation was rapidly changing. A smallpox epidemic in the 1830s had reduced the population and strength of the tribe. The hide of the buffalo had become an item of commerce rather then a protected and respected source of life.
Difficult Times Whiskey trading, lawlessness, and political desires for statehood were manifested in greed and hunger for Native American lands and a manufactured war. Searching for a small group of Blackfeet who had killed a prominent Montana territory citizen, the U.S. military killed over 173 old men, women, and children on the Marias River in 1870. The loss of food sources such as the buffalo and wild game influenced the Blackfeet to sign treaties that severely reduced the land areas set aside in the 1855 treaty. An unratified treaty in 1865 was held in abeyance until Congress initiated legislation to end treaty making with American Indians in 1871. This led to loss of other tribal lands by executive order of the president of United States or congressional legislation. In the winter of 1883 to 1884, many Blackfeet starved to death. Corruption within the system reduced the food and treaty goods promised in return for the massive areas of land. Since “civilizing and Christianizing” had long been a thematic approach among Europeans, each Native tribe was assigned to a religious denomination. Although the Methodists had been assigned to the Blackfeet, the Catholics instituted St. Peter’s Mission in 1865 near Sun River. In 1890, a Catholic mission boarding school was built, and it operated on the Two
Medicine River until the 1930s. The first Native boarding school for the Blackfeet operated from 1892 to 1910 at Fort Shaw in the former military buildings. Later, the federal government operated a boarding school at Cut Bank Creek, about twelve miles from present-day Browning, Montana. After the Treaty of 1855, the federal government established a series of Blackfeet Indian agencies that included Fort Benton, Fort Shaw on Sun River, Teton by Chouteau, and two different locations on Badger Creek. By 1895, the Indian agency was located in present-day Browning, Montana. The 1887 Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, allotted land to individual American Indians in tracts of 160 to 320 acres, depending upon the agricultural capacity of the land. However, most of the reservation communities grew out of the former “band” concept of extended families living together. Until the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, the Indian agent appointed Native leaders to a governing body. The IRA provided for a constitutional form of government with elected members to form a governing tribal council.
Contemporary Community The economy of the Blackfeet for many years depended upon oil and gas, timber, and leasing of communally owned lands. The Blackfeet in more recent times have worked diligently to attract the tourism industry. Many tribally operated government programs have evolved through the Indian SelfDetermination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. The Blackfeet Nation now manages many of the programs formerly operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service. Programs such as a housing authority and a Blackfeet community college have been in operation for several years. According to the enrollment office of the Blackfeet Nation tribal government, there are presently over 17,000 tribal members on the official enrollment records. Well over half of the enrolled tribal members live on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, while many make their home in urban areas. Donald D. Pepion See Appendix A See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Dawes Act of 1887; Native American Education; Native American Identity; Native Americans; Reservation System
Black Intellectuals
Further Readings
Bullchild, Percy. 1985. The Sun Came Down. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Ewers, John C. [1958] 1983. The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwest Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Grinnell, George Bird. 1892. Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People. New York: Charles Scribner’s. Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1962. McClintock, Walter. 1910. The Old North Trail: Life, Legends, and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians. London: Macmillan. Bison Books. Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
BLACK INTELLECTUALS A review of Black history and culture will reveal any number of African American intellectuals on the Black sociocultural and political landscape: literary intellectuals, political intellectuals, economic intellectuals, “organic” intellectuals, worker’s intellectuals, community intellectuals, and others. Central to their thinking is a devotion to ideas and the dissemination of such ideas, in the form of the written word, the lecture, or works of art. There have been considerable differences, however, over what role the intellectual should play in the larger African American community. This entry presents a brief history of that discussion.
Du Bois Sets a Standard W. E. B. Du Bois once noted that the existence of a Black middle class in the United States represented a double paradox: a “paradox within a paradox.” One might then view the idea of a Black intellectual class as such a paradox, as over time it has been far easier to obtain middle-class status than to become an intellectual. Du Bois had observed the existence of a small, educated, and reflective class during his undergraduate years at Fisk University, in Tennessee; at Harvard; and for 2 years during his studies at the University of Berlin. He returned to Harvard, completed his doctoral dissertation, accepted his first teaching position at Wilberforce University, and prepared himself to engage in the battle of ideas surrounding the role and status of Blacks in the United States. Du Bois’s first major address on race and the role of intellectuals, those whom he had labeled the
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“Talented Tenth,” was the first position paper presented before the newly formed Negro American Academy. In it, Du Bois enumerated the problems confronting Black Americans and the role of the academy and its educated cadre in addressing such problems. Black intellectuals, according to Du Bois, were to be the creators of ideas and the shapers of the values necessary in what he believed would constitute the emergence of revolutionary ideas in the making of a “New Black” and “New White” America. Comm mitm ment to o the Massses
Essentially, Du Bois envisioned a powerful class of educated Blacks, almost Leninist in their convictions and ideological commitment, which would do for the masses of the newly emancipated Blacks what they, lacking education, skills, and cultural insights, could not do themselves. Booker T. Washington and other critics of Du Bois’s intellectual strategy contended that Blacks were not interested in replacing a White elite with a Black elite, but Du Bois asserted that it was not simply a matter of being an elite. What was expected of the Talented Tenth was a life dedicated to the cause of freedom and a willingness to forgo some of the ordinary pleasures of life in order to liberate Blacks from racial and class bondage. Like Marx before him and Lenin after him, Du Bois also believed that an educated class should play a crucial role in initiating and assisting in the consciousnessraising process among the general population. Marx and Lenin focused on class consciousness, whereas Du Bois focused on both race and class. Du Bois thought nationalism would be a central theme in the class and racial struggle, and thus it was important for leaders to be well-versed in European and American “high culture,” as well as being grounded in and having an appreciation for Black history and culture. This was mandated because this intellectual elite class would be responsible for interacting with both groups. The last quarter of the 19th century was a period of great social convulsion, in both the North and South. In the North, entrepreneurial capitalism and the factory took root; in the South, a counterReconstructionist movement took shape, and lynchings became more pervasive. Religious intellectuals such as Bishop Turner of the AME Church were interested in establishing colonies in Africa for Black Americans, while, simultaneously, European powers met at the Berlin Conference and proceeded to divide
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Africa among themselves. These events made an intellectual class even more necessary, and Du Bois sought to address the Africa issue by working with Black and White intellectuals to create a series of panAfrican conferences in Europe. Most important in this period was the rise of Booker T. Washington as the leading spokesman for the Black population, following the death of Frederick Douglass in 1885. Du Bois published his insightful and radical critique of race and class, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and later collaborated with intellectuals, Black and White, to create first the Niagara Movement and later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Many political intellectuals wanted to redirect the Black political voice and worked within the NAACP to push for greater civil rights and voting rights in the South. Some joined the Garvey movement, and others joined various socialist and communist movements. Thus, some of the earliest issues facing political intellectuals can be said to have been nationalism versus internationalism and integration versus separatism. Activ visst Artistss
As the political intellectuals were fighting their battles, creative and artistic intellectuals were entering the first phase of what would be called the “Harlem Renaissance” and the idea of the “New Negro.” The political and creative intellectuals were reinforcing each other in their themes and orientations. While the goals of the political intellectuals were more clearly equality and justice, the creative intellectuals saw themselves as involved in the same struggle. These creative and literary intellectuals representing the “New Negro” theme sought to focus on Africa and return to the rural, and natural, cultural roots of Blacks to illustrate the beauty of the African and African American in the outpouring of artworks, novels, poems, and nonfiction devoted to an explication of how and why the “New Negro” was, of necessity, different and better than the “Old Negro.” The “Old” and the “New” Negro were depicted as competing paradigms in the writings of Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Kelly Miller, and Zora Neale Hurston. Du Bois spoke for his age and the aspirations of Blacks when he noted that with the rise of lynching, the institutionalization of Jim Crow throughout the South, and the intensification of European and American imperialism and colonialism, there was no
recourse for intellectuals other than to join the battle and use their intellectual weapons in the struggle for freedom. Seeing the depth and intensity of prejudice and discrimination, he viewed the only realistic role for intellectuals as being the agents and models for social agitation and propaganda. He reasoned that in the middle of a battle, there was no place for “art for art’s sake,” and cultural intellectuals who were members of oppressed groups had a responsibility to their people to use their resources to advance their cause.
Another Voice, Another View In the 1940s and 1950s a different role of the Black intellectual was enunciated by Ralph Ellison, especially on the issue of literary and creative intellectuals. If Ellison ever viewed writing and art as constituting agitation or propaganda, it would be with a small “a” or “p,” never capitalized. For him, if artistic works were weapons, they would serve only as important by-products of literary and artistic creativity, never as their driving force. In this belief, Ellison differed from his contemporaries Richard Wright and James Baldwin, as well as from Du Bois. Thus, Ellison, more than any Black intellectual, would bifurcate African American thinking about the role of Black intellectuals. Some were overt in their struggle and willing to use their art toward political objectives, whereas others wanted their works to be examples illustrating to the larger society that African Americans’ works were just as good or better than those of artists from the dominant society. Ellison saw a distinction between the intellectual as artist and the intellectual as political agitator and thought writing just to incite or to support a cause resulted in bad writing. Other intellectuals—ministers, university students, and some university professors— were more clearly in the Du Boisian mold. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, these intellectuals played major roles as organizers and demonstrators. Of the limited number of Black faculty and students entering formerly all-White universities, many became intensely engaged in struggles to create Black student unions and Black and African American Studies programs, as well as the push to hire African American faculty and administrators. Some of these faculty and students in formerly all-White institutions exemplified the “intellectualagitator” as Du Bois perceived the role. As the Civil Rights Movement morphed into the Black Power Movement, Black intellectuals, as
Black Intellectuals
novelists, essayists, poets, editors, and scholars, also played a major role in highlighting the idea of community control, the “Black is beautiful” theme, ideas of pan-Africanism, and cultural nationalism and revolutionary nationalism. In addition, intellectuals were the galvanizing force behind ideas pertinent to the creation of a national Black theater, the Black university, and a host of Black publishing companies; the Black Christ and the Black church; and efforts to create Black political parties. Even as Black intellectuals provided the fuel for these ideas, groups, and organizations, other Black intellectuals continued to work with more mainstream Black organizations, such as the NAACP, the Urban League, and the mainstream civic and social organizations, such as sororities and fraternities. Some Christian intellectuals were moving in the direction of defining a Black Christianity, whereas others, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.; C. Eric Lincoln; Andrew Young; and James Cone, sought intellectual and spiritual sustenance from mainline and traditional Christian churches.
A Crisis Is Defined In his book The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), Harold Cruse sought to depict what he viewed as a national crisis among Black intellectuals. What he actually documented, however, were the ongoing contentious political battles between nationalists, socialists, and communists and the often ambivalent relationship between Black intellectuals and other intellectuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in New York City. One of the significant features of Black intellectuals, from Du Bois to Cruse, was that they were excluded from the major White political, financial, educational, and cultural institutions of their day. If they were part of the academic world, they were confined solely to predominately Black institutions. Thus, Du Bois and other Black intellectuals of his generation spoke as marginal outsiders, and one might proffer the view that these academic intellectuals might have understood their marginality: Many knew they were qualified to teach at the major institutions that were most unlikely to employ them. It was only in the 1940s that the noted scholar Allison Davis was employed as the first Black scholar to teach at a predominately White university, the University of Chicago. The Black student and faculty presence became more evident in the early 1970s, and since them, Black intellectuals have played significant
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roles in many institutions. The Harold Cruse question, however, is still open: Why are Black intellectuals unable or unwilling to provide cultural, educational, and political direction and leadership for the Black population? Perhaps they do, and one should not forget the role and impact of intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. A review of the role of intellectuals during the Black Power era illustrates a heightened cultural and political role as Black theater groups, poetry societies, and community and student organizations flourished. This was also the period of increased aspirations for Black community control, as well as movements toward the establishment of Black-controlled political parties. As stated previously, the greatest and most enduring example of a major role for Black intellectuals can be seen in academia and the impact of Black scholars in helping to shape African and Black Studies programs, as well as initiating a host of academic and administrative changes in the academy. If one seriously raises the question of the effectiveness of Black intellectuals in the academy, the question may be asked of the effectiveness of the intellectual in general at this juncture in American life. There is a sense in which these intellectuals are not satisfied with the core values and ideas in either the larger White American culture or the African American culture. There are public intellectuals who are engaged in the central questions and issues of the day, and they are often quoted in the national media outlets. There are also, however, local and regional intellectuals whose roles and activities are significant only in their immediate environment and communities. Many are involved in local civic, religious, and fraternal and sorority organizations, but they play minor roles in larger national organizations. Although they may understand the importance of the role of public intellectuals, many do not see that role as Du Bois did. Rather, they have defined their role not so much as national speechmakers, but as activist-intellectuals and community and regional practitioners in a variety of institutions and organizations. Rutledge M. Dennis See also African American Studies; Baldwin, James; Black Conservatives; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Civil Rights Movement; Community Empowerment; Double Consciousness; Du Bois, William Edward
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Burghardt; Harlem Renaissance; Invisible Man; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Marginalization; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Talented Tenth; Veil; Washington, Booker T.; Williams, Fannie Barrier
Further Readings
Bronz, Stephen H. 1976. Roots of Negro Consciousness. New York: Libra. Cruse, Harold. 1967. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York: Morrow. Dennis, Rutledge M. 1977. “Dubois and the Role of the Educated Elite.” Journal of Negro Education 46:388–402. Dennis, Rutledge M., ed. 1997. The Black Intellectuals. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1897] 1970. “The Conservation of Races.” The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2. Pp. 73–85 in W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks, edited by P. Foner. New York: Pathfinder Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1971. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Penguin Books. Johnson, Roosevelt. 1974. Black Scholars on Higher Education in the 70s. Columbus, OH: ECC. Lenin, Vladimar I. 1969. What Is to Be Done. New York: International Publishers. Locke, Alain. [1925] 1969. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum. McEvoy, James and Abraham Miller. 1969. Black Power and Student Rebellion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS See JEWISH-BLACK RELATIONS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; JEWISH-BLACK RELATIONS: THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
BLACK MARXISM See ROBINSON, CEDRIC
BLACK METROPOLIS The term Black Metropolis was coined in the book The Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a
Northern City, by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton (1945). It is a monumental work that describes and analyzes Black life and culture in Chicago after World War I, from historical, anthropological, sociological, economic, and political perspectives. This entry describes the history of the community that was the subject of their research. The Great Migration that began just before World War I and continued through World War II was the largest redistribution of a single population in the United States. As migrants from the South, Blacks transplanted themselves and built social, cultural, religious, political, and economic institutions in Chicago to sustain their lives in an environment that treated them as second-class citizens. The Black Metropolis, a city within a city, was theoretically defined as an internal colony within the United States dealing with overt and covert racism—from the 1919 riots to restrictive covenants to the concentration of public housing to urban redevelopment and the removal of poor men and women and children in the first decade of the 21st century. While Black individuals and their families were a critical and vital population resource for the eventual development of Chicago and the Black Metropolis, many were forced to live in segregated and substandard housing facilities and could not obtain access to employment and educational opportunities equal to those of their White counterparts. Although confined in a narrow corridor on Chicago’s South Side, infamously known as the “Black Belt,” they transplanted their culture, economic and political skills, and lifestyle by naming the Black Metropolis “Bronzeville.” The name symbolized and illuminated the class, cultural, social, and economic dynamism of the multiple shades and colors of Black people who inhabited the community, depicting the emergence of an energetic Black identity through a renaissance of Black businesses and cultural expression, in particular blues music and African American literature. By the 1960s, the communities of Douglas and Grand Boulevard, two original settlement areas for Blacks during the Great Migration, held the largest concentration of public housing in the city of Chicago. The residential mobility of the Black middle and upper classes alone cannot explain the rapid deterioration of Bronzeville, with its cultural, artistic, and musical legacy. Institutions at the city, county, state, and federal levels orchestrated a policy of housing confinement for the Black working class and working
Black Nationalism
poor that fundamentally changed the rich diversity and cultural literacy that had characterized the life of Bronzeville. In Chicago, the African American community faced intense hypersegregation in housing, employment, and schools. These conditions in Chicago, although different from Southern Jim Crow laws and violence, had a no less serious impact on the economic, social, political, and cultural life chances of the African Americans in the Black Metropolis. To cope with segregation in employment, housing, and schooling, African Americans challenged discrimination in employment, housing, and schools. As the size of the Black Metropolis increased, “Negro jobs, Negro housing, and Negro schooling” became institutionalized into an identifiable sublabor and subpolitical market within Chicago. During the first half of the 20th century, African Americans were confined to the Black Metropolis and worked in the lowest-paying jobs in Chicago, but they formed a critical labor force for the city of Chicago and the United States during World War I and World War II. They built institutions like the Binga Bank; Douglas Bank; the Anthony Overton Hygienic Company; Supreme Life Insurance Company; the Chicago Urban League; the George Cleveland Hall Library, a National Literary Landmark; social clubs, like the famous Checkerboard (blues club); the Palm Tavern; and well over 500 churches. The legacy of the Black Metropolis continues into the 21st century, as the community has been designated by the City of Chicago as a historic landmark, paving the way for land clearance and “urban redevelopment,” while removing two-thirds of mostly poor and workingclass men, women, and children. Theodoric Manley, Jr. See also American Apartheid; Drake, St. Clair; Gentrification; Jim Crow; Washington, Harold
Further Readings
Drake, St. Clair and Horace Cayton. 1945. The Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, vol. 1. New York: Harcourt Brace. Grimshaw, William J. 1992. Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine 1931–1991. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hirsch, Arnold R. 1998. Making of the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago: 1940–1960. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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Jones, LeAlan and Lloyd Newman, with David Isay. 1997. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago. New York: Scribner’s. Manley, Theodoric, Jr., Avery Buffa, Caleb Dube, Molly Szymanksi, Matthew Murphy, Cassandra Brandt, et al. 2007. The Way They Saw It: The Changing Face of Bronzeville. Philadelphia, PA: Dorrance. Spear, Alan H. 1967. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2000. The American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
BLACK NATIONALISM Black Nationalism is a social and political term that refers to the internationalizing of the African struggle, creating a confraternity among all African peoples and placing their struggle against oppression in a global context. Although quite old, the term has seen several periods of resurgence. For African Americans, the term is most associated with the 1960s and 1970s and with the African American struggle for civil rights. It also was an important element in cementing support and forming coalitions among the various groups fighting for civil rights. As the Civil Rights Movement expanded and developed, some of the more integrationist themes of the earlier movement were rejected in favor of a more Nationalist vision emphasizing Black self-help and group solidarity. This movement helped groups like the Black Panther Party form important intellectual alliances with Afro-Cubans and other Blacks who were part of the African diaspora. This entry looks at the long history of the movement and its key proponents.
Before the Civil War Although most people associate the term Black Nationalism with Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the term actually predates Garvey. Garvey was just one in a long line of people who called for a return to Africa by forming a “Back to Africa” movement. His organization continued a tradition of pan-African organizations, which attempted to make a connection between the struggles of Africans everywhere. Even during the
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period of U.S. slavery, there were poorly organized but effective Black Nationalist movements designed to attack slavery, develop group solidarity, and impact people’s opinion of Africans. Almost immediately after the Revolutionary War, many African Americans realized that the new nation’s leaders intended to keep them in slavery. Therefore, free Blacks made an attempt to connect their struggle with Africa by naming their institutions and organizations after Africa. This attempt to connect themselves to their former homeland was a nascent attempt at establishing Black Nationalism and collectively fighting injustice. This move to connect with Africa was a demonstration of intellectual independence and self-determination, along with a reaction to exclusion from the larger society. As Whites became increasingly hostile to African American attempts at inclusion, Blacks came to believe that they had to take care of themselves. Free Blacks played a leading role, advocating for their brothers and sisters still locked in slavery. They petitioned Congress, wrote letters, organized protests, and formed associations. James Forten, Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen were among the early Black Nationalists, who saw their struggle for dignity and equal rights from a global perspective. The founding of organizations such as the Free African Society (1787), Prince Hall Masons (1791), First African Church of Savannah (1793), Daughters of Africa (1796), and the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816) were just a few of the outward manifestations of this movement. Voyages to o Africa a
Several movements of the early 19th century can clearly be defined as Black Nationalist movements, among them Paul Cuffe and his voyages to Africa to return former slaves and Martin Delany and his separatist and colonization movements. Cuffe, along with his brother John, had sued the Massachusetts legislature for the right to vote. In a landmark decision, the courts sided with the brothers and opened the franchise to them. Cuffe, the son of an African chieftain and a Native American mother, made a small fortune as a shipper in Boston. He became convinced that the solution to the slave trade was African American migration to Africa. He tried to establish a colony in Sierra Leone as a first step to Black colonization. Most of the antebellum Black Nationalist movements were centered around freeing Africans from slavery and returning them to their homeland. Martin
Delany, who had a Harvard medical degree, took this notion further than most, arguing that Africa was the natural home for all those of color. He is credited with coining the phrase “Africa for the Africans.”
Henry McNeil Turner After the Civil War, Black Nationalist activities increased as Africans attempted to once again internationalize their struggle against legalized discrimination. Most of these movements and organizers continued to look to Africa as an answer to the problem of Black marginalization. African Americans pooled their resources and purchased ships and land and made voyages to Africa. One of the most famous of these voyages was carried out by the Liberian Exodus and Joint Stock Steamship Company. In 1878, they purchased the Azor and made a voyage to Liberia with 206 passengers. The man most associated with the post–Civil War Back to Africa movement was Henry McNeil Turner. Turner was a controversial figure whose life spanned some of the most critical periods in African American history. During the great experiment of Reconstruction, Turner proved to be a very effective and artful politician, whose political leanings were difficult to gauge. Turner was born into slavery in 1834. Early on, he came to see the power of education; he learned to read and write and became a Methodist minister. In 1858, Turner joined the AME church and moved to Baltimore, where he began an intensive program of studying theology, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew with several Trinity College professors. In 1860, he was made pastor of Union Bethel Church, the largest Black church in Washington, DC. After the Civil War, Turner went to Georgia, where he helped start the AME church in that state. Using a grassroots campaign, he ran as a Republican candidate for the Georgia house, serving from 1868 to 1870. Turner became a proponent of African emigration, arguing the positive aspects of Africa. Turner made connections with Africans in Sierra Leone and Liberia. There, he emphasized the connections between Black Americans and Africans. He was a tireless minister who established schools, churches, and other institutions in Africa. Turner was able to plant the AME church in Africa, forming a strong religious tie between the peoples on both continents. Turner was a dedicated opponent of segregation and discrimination in the United States, condemning Whites for their treatment of African Americans.
Black Nationalism
Turner argued that African Americans should leave the United States and return to Africa, where they could regenerate the African continent. Several people followed Turner’s lead and made connections with Africa. In 1903, William Ellis led an expedition to Ethiopia. Harry Dean attempted to establish a kingdom in Basutoland. After Turner’s death in 1915, Alfred C. Sam formed the Akim Trading Company. In 1914, he led an expedition of 60 African Americans to Ghana. By 1915, Marcus Garvey and his UNIA organization were beginning to look at Africa as a natural home for Africans all over the globe. Garvey utilized the phrase “Africa for the Africans at Home and Abroad.”
Marcus Garvey The Garvey movement came on the scene just as African Americans were beginning to feel the sting of disappointment after their service in the First World War. African Americans found themselves once again being shunted into a second-class status after the unfulfilled promises of President Woodrow Wilson. With the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and an increase in lynching, along with a brutal assault on nonconformity, frustrated African Americans looked for alternatives. Garvey argued that Africa was the last hope for African Americans. It was a place where they could fulfill their potential and create a great society, which he believed could equal and surpass Europe and America. Garvey attacked America’s racism, challenged White scholars, and emphasized the positive aspects of African American life. Garvey challenged Africans all over the world to internationalize their struggle and make connections with other Africans. In Chicago, another Black Nationalist, Grover Cleveland Redding, encouraged African Americans to return to Africa. He developed a loyal and vocal following for his Abyssinian movement. Members argued that Ethiopia was the place for African Americans to return in order to reclaim Africa’s glory. Redding led a large, controversial parade through Chicago on Sunday, June 20, 1920. Riding a white horse and wearing a gaudy costume, which he claimed was the costume of an African prince, Redding stopped his parade and then burned an American flag. When an African American police officer attempted to halt his actions, one of Redding’s followers shot and killed the officer. In the riot that followed, a White storeowner and soldier were also killed. Redding and a follower were eventually executed for the killings.
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Garvey’s movement helped spur several others. Many of those who joined with W. D. Fard Muhammad and the Black Muslim movement came out of the Garvey movement. When Elijah Muhammad took control of the organization, he copied many of the techniques and ideas first espoused by Garvey. He went so far as to argue that Whites were devils and that they had deliberately deceived African Americans about their history and heritage. Dr. W. E. B. Dubois worked with others from all over the world as part of the pan-African movement. This movement was separate and distinct from the Garvey movement and emphasized making connections with African nations. Pan-Africanists saw Africa as a potential superpower that just needed to free itself from its colonial past. Instead of viewing the African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans as neocolonialist, pan-Africanists wanted to work with and through the Africans to help Africa develop.
Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Era By the 1960s, once again African Americans made an attempt to internationalize their struggle. Malcolm X, the national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, threatened to take the United States before the United Nations and challenge the country with crimes against humanity for its treatment of African Americans. Malcolm X challenged African American youth to expand their vision from civil rights to a struggle for human rights. Though Malcolm X rejected the Christian principles outlined by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he nevertheless emphasized the brotherhood of all African peoples. Malcolm’s activism inspired restless young African Americans who sought an alternative to the recognized Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King. Malcolm became something of a cult hero after he resigned from the Nation of Islam and formed his own organization, called the Organization of African American Unity. He modeled this organization on the Organization of African Unity. Malcolm X denounced his former association with the Nation of Islam, no longer viewing Whites as devils. He gave cautious support to the Civil Rights Movement and attempted to make connections with revolutionary African leaders. Malcolm underwent a spiritual reformation, moving closer to orthodox Islam and rejecting many of his Black Muslim teachings. He challenged American racism, advocating self-defense as opposed to nonviolence. He
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emphasized Black Nationalist thought, encouraging Blacks to control their own communities, economies, culture, religion, and politics. He encouraged African Americans to form rifle clubs and to defend their communities from White terrorist attacks. Although he advocated Black Nationalist thought, he slowly moved toward an interracial alliance with progressive Whites. However, before he could move too far in this direction, he was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in New York City. Several Black radicals took up Malcolm X’s vision and blueprint in forming their own organizations. The Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality all shifted their interests toward a Black Nationalist philosophy, encouraging their followers to reject cooperation with Whites and instead to look to Africa and Black people in general for solutions to their problems. Black Nationalism continued to evolve, and by the 1980s and 1990s, it had become part of an intellectual argument over the necessity of Afrocentric perspectives in education. These debates involved topics such as Ebonics, reparations, and race-sensitive standardized tests. Black Nationalism continues to be a part of the intellectual debates dominating Black thought. It helped undergird the necessary pressure to end apartheid and today is fueling much of the work on global solutions to problems such as AIDS, debt relief, and African development. Abel A. Bartley See also Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Black Panther Party; Civil Rights Movement; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Malcolm X; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Cleaver, Eldridge. 1991. Soul on Ice. New York: Delta Trade Paperback. Haley, Alex. 1964. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books. Moses, Jeremiah Wilson. 1988. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism 1850–1925. New York: Oxford University Press. Moses, Jeremiah Wilson, ed. 1996.Classical Black Nationalism from American Revolution to Marcus Garvey. New York: New York University Press.
BLACK PANTHER PARTY The Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, two African American college students in Oakland, California. Seale, the chairman, and Newton, the minister of defense, wanted to offer an urban perspective to the race problem in America. The two men symbolized the growing frustrations of young African Americans about the progress of the Civil Rights Movement. This entry looks at the history of the organization, recording its many contributions along with the controversy and conflict it generated.
Building an Organization Bobby Seale was born on October 22, 1936, in Dallas, Texas, the oldest of three children. His father was a master carpenter who taught him the carpentry trade. Seale was a naturally gifted individual and mastered the concert piano. He worked several jobs as a journeyman sheet metal mechanic and mechanical draftsman before joining the air force, where he was dismissed on a bad conduct discharge. Unable to find stable work, Seale attended Merritt College in Oakland, where he met Huey Newton in September 1962. Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana, the last of seven children. His father was an itinerant minister who moved the family to Oakland in 1944. Newton struggled in school until his older brother tutored him through high school. After graduation, he enrolled in Merritt College. Newton became an ardent reader of African American history and literature and participated in several radical organizations. He met Bobby Seale while both were members of the Afro-American Association, a student organization that debated African American topics. The men were immediately drawn together by their radical ideology and their commitment to the poor. They volunteered in the Oakland Poverty Center, where they got a firsthand view of the effects of urban poverty. At Oakland Community College, they laid the foundation for the introduction of Black History courses and successfully campaigned for hiring additional Black faculty. After becoming disillusioned with the plight of the poor and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, they formed the Black Panther Party. They were concerned about the ghetto conditions African Americans
Black Panther Party
faced in urban areas of the West. They believed that the Civil Rights Movement had not promoted the structural changes necessary to ensure Blacks meaningful economic opportunities or to attain African American equality. Therefore, they broke from the mainstream nonviolent civil rights struggle and advocated a program of self-defense and self-determination, which was anchored in their Black Nationalist philosophy. Shifting emphasis away from Dr. King’s integrationist stance, they instead advocated a nationalist and socialist ideology more closely associated with his critics. After reading the writings of Malcolm X and Franz Fanon, they adopted their ideas advocating the internationalization of the African American cause. They called for armed resistance to American oppression and destruction of the machinery of the oppressor. They were especially concerned with the treatment African Americans received from what they called racist police forces. Later, they read works from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara. They adopted Mao Zedong’s teachings, including his words “Power emanates from the barrel of a gun.” They emphasized the progress made by violent Black revolutionaries like Denmark Vesey, Toussaint L’Overture, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner, arguing that violence in self-defense does work. The organization’s name and emblem were borrowed from Stokely Carmichael’s Lowndes County, Alabama, Freedom Organization, which had been founded a few years earlier. Over time, the Black Panthers established chapters in nearly every major city and had a membership that numbered in the thousands. They were able to expand their program from the West into urban areas all over the country by emphasizing their social programs and advocating a revolutionary philosophy. They recruited several talented individuals who helped popularize the Panther ideas. Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Hutton, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Fred Hampton, and others became overnight heroes in the Black community for their radical denunciations of the White power structure. They organized and ran in political campaigns, with Eldridge Cleaver serving as the Black Panther candidate for president in 1968 and garnering more than 200,000 votes.
Contributions and Controversy Initially, the group’s aim was to protect African American communities and end police brutality and
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oppression. The Black Panther Party developed programs and activities designed to aid the urban poor, such as free clinics to provide medical aid to the poor and food giveaways to disadvantaged schoolchildren. By 1969, each morning, the party fed more than 10,000 children breakfast. The party also organized the first ghetto-centered antidrug programs, teaching the evils of drugs, and held nutrition, parasite prevention, and oral hygiene seminars. Panther volunteers were trained by doctors and given medical supplies, such as microscopes and free medication. The Black Panthers developed the rallying cry of “Power to the People,” which emphasized their belief in Black empowerment. They were harsh critics of the police and their treatment of African Americans, especially those locked in urban ghettos. They referred to ghettos as “exploited colonies” of the United States. In Point 7 of their ten-point program, they called for an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people. Panther leaders referred to the police as “pigs,” an expression that later became more widespread. To check the influence of the police in their community, they organized police patrols, which followed police officers and reported on their interactions with minorities. These patrols, by armed Black Panthers, were directly responsible for a drastic cut in cases of police brutality. The presence of armed Black revolutionaries frightened White Californians and pushed the state to introduce a gun control measure. To protest the proposed bill, Panther leaders in full regalia marched on the California State Assembly on May 2, 1967, read a prepared statement, and then left. Their accidental appearance on the chamber floor frightened the assembled legislators, and the police arrested the Panthers for disturbing the peace and conspiracy. Seale spent 6 months in jail as a result, but the party was able to make a critical point and gain valuable publicity. Violent Con nflict
This confrontational approach eventually led to a series of deadly gun battles, which left several Black Panthers and at least one police officer dead. The police responded to the Panther challenge by engaging in a systematic campaign to rid their communities of the Panther Party. Local, state, and federal officials participated in this campaign, which eventually killed or arrested or most of the Panther leadership forced them to go on the run.
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FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and directed his agents to engage in a counterintelligence campaign against the organization. He wanted to cripple the Black Panthers and destroy their influence. Working with several law enforcement agencies, his agents delivered a series of devastating blows to the Panther organization. In 1969, Fred Hampton, a member of the Panthers in Chicago, and his assistant Mark Clark, were killed in a shootout with Chicago police. The police fired more than 100 bullets, while only one shot could be traced to the Panthers. Bobby Seale was sent to prison for his involvement in rioting at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Bobby Hutton, a 17-year-old Panther, was killed in a shootout with Oakland police. Eldridge Cleaver, the organization’s minister of information, was wounded in the same shootout. After the shooting, Cleaver, who had earlier spent 9 years in prison, was arrested for violating his parole. In November, he left the country, remaining abroad to avoid trial for the shootout. By 1972, twenty-four Black Panthers had been killed in shootouts with police. This caused the Panther leadership to make a controversial decision to denounce violence and instead work to organize the poor.
White radical groups. Carmichael argued that the organization needed to continue an unremitting struggle against the White Western world.
Rev viv vin ng the Plan
BLACK POWER
The Black Panther Party used Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to formulate many of its strategies and ideas. Leaders encouraged their followers to read his book. Working from a blueprint called the “Black Panther Party Platform and Program,” Seale and Newton outlined a ten-point plan for recapturing the lost momentum of the civil rights struggle. The plan called for self-determination for African American communities, full employment, decent housing, teaching of African American history in schools, exemption from military service, trial of Black defendants before a Black judge and jury, and release of all Black prisoners from jail. Seale and Newton emphasized the class struggle, borrowing much of their ideology from Maoist thought. Though dedicated to socialism, the Black Panthers nevertheless built a wide coalition made up liberal Whites and disaffected African American youth. Expanding their base proved controversial, as Stokely Carmichael, the organization’s prime minister, resigned in protest over the Panthers’ coalition with
Abel A. Bartley See also Black Intellectuals; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Carmichael, Stokely; Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Marxism and Racism; Newton, Huey
Further Readings
Cleaver, Kathleen and George Katsiaficas. 2001. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party. New York: Routledge. Foner, Philip. 1970. The Black Panthers Speak: The Manifesto of the Party: The First Complete Documentary Record of the Panthers Program. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott. Hilliard, David and Donald Weise. 2002. The Huey Newton Reader. New York: Seven Stories Press. Hilliard, David and Keith Zimmerman. 2006. Huey:Spirit of the Panther. New York: Thunder Mouth Press. Seale, Bobby. 1970. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey Newton. New York: Vintage Books.
The Black Power Movement (1965–1975) and the Civil Rights Movement (1955–1965) form different phases of the overarching African American struggle called the Black Freedom Movement. Black Power, as the latter phase of the Black Freedom Movement, emerged in the wake of the decline of the Civil Rights phase. Its beginning was marked by the 1965 Watts Revolt and extended to the mid-1970s, with 1975 often set as its end year. This entry describes the movement and its impact.
Origins of Expression Although the term Black Power was not used widely in a movement context until 1966, it had roots in the ongoing Black Nationalist sentiment and organizational thrusts among African Americans, most exemplified by Marcus Garvey. The father of modern Black Nationalism constantly called for organization for the acquisition of power for Black people. In the 1950s,
Black Power
Richard Wright used the term Black Power in the title of one of his books, and Paul Robeson had used it in his writings. When the Black Power Movement emerged in the 1960s, the teachings of the Nation of Islam and its national spokesman, Malcolm X, played key roles in shaping its conception and development. Robert Williams, a self-defense activist and major Black Power activist, had also used the term in his writings from exile and, along with Malcolm X, had contributed to Black Power advocates’ stress on armed self-defense. The revolutionary leaders Frantz Fanon (Martinique and Algeria) and Sekou Toure (Guinea) stressed cultural revolution and culture as an indispensable aspect of the liberation struggle; they also had a tremendous impact on the idea and pursuit of Black Power by its advocates. The direct call for Black Power came in 1966 from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), during one of its marches for civil rights. One of its members, Willie Ricks (Mukasa), made the call for “Black Power,” and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), its chair, took up the call and turned it into a national battle cry. In fact, the SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) were transformed from civil rights organizations and became leading advocates of Black Power.
Popularization of Black Power In a baccalaureate speech in May 1966 at Howard University, Representative Adam Clayton Powell advanced a concept he would later seek to institutionalize in the form of Black Power conferences. He stated in his address that “human rights are Godgiven. Civil rights are man-made. . . . Our life must be purposed to implement human rights. . . . To demand these God-given rights is to seek Black power—the power to build Black institutions of splendid achievement.” In August, Representative Powell, then chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, called a group of leaders and activists to Washington to plan a series of Black Power conferences. The purpose of these conferences was to discuss critical issues facing Black people nationally and internationally, develop an activist agenda to address these issues, and build structures and processes to carry out the agenda. Out of the initial planning meeting, a coordinating committee called the Continuations Committee was formed, with
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Nathan Wright, director of urban affairs of the Episcopal Diocese (Newark), as chair; Maulana Karenga, chair of the Organization Us (Los Angeles), as vice-chair; and other members Omar Ahmed (Bronx, New York), Isaiah Robison (New York), and Chuck Stone (Washington, D.C.). Although definitions of Black Power were varied, they generally stressed Black people’s building and control of the political, economic, and cultural institutions of their communities and living free and selfdetermined lives in society and the world. Maulana Karenga, who emerged as a central organizer and main theoretician of the Black Power conferences, views Black Power as the struggle of Black people pledged collectively to self-determination, selfrespect, and self-defense. The goal of self-determination stressed the quest for political and economic control of the Black community; political consciousness and responsibility; and rightful representation in the country, activism, unity, and institution building. In its international aspect, it supported pan-African unity, common struggle and liberation, and linkage with Third World liberation movements. The emphasis on self-respect spoke to cultural grounding, reaffirming an African American identity, dignity, and humanity in the context of African American culture; a “return to the source” as an African people; and a proud and productive assertion in the world as Black (African) people. The stress on selfdefense involved affirmation of the right and responsibility of resistance to oppression, including armed self-defense, or, as Malcolm X phrased it, the right to struggle for “freedom by any means necessary.” The first of the Black Power conferences was held in Newark in 1967 and the second in Philadelphia in 1968. Several other similar conferences were held later under different auspices. But the first two held at the height of the Black Power Movement were at the center of its self-definition and tended to reflect its goals and direction. At the first conference, in Newark, over 1,000 representatives came from across the United States and from Africa and the Caribbean. Beginning July 20, the 4-day conference conducted fourteen workshops, including topics on politics, economics, religion, international relations, youth, art and communications, professionals, coalitions and alliances, family, the city, and social change. Resolutions were passed establishing policy in these areas. Especially notable were the decisions to engage in electoral politics in Newark and the establishment of Black political
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power in that city as a major goal, a goal eventually achieved.
Impact of the Movement The Black Power Movement expressed itself in electoral struggles in the North and the South. Examples are the penetration of African Americans into city government with the election of African American big-city mayors and councilpersons, not only in Newark but also throughout the country. A number of Black party formations came together in the North and the South, including the development of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and others. Also important were the new Black United Front initiatives organized around the term operational unity, put forth by Maulana Karenga and defined as “unity without uniformity, unity in diversity.” These included local formations like the Los Angeles Black Congress (Los Angeles), the Black Federation (San Diego), the Committee for a United Newark (Newark), and others. It also gave rise to the New Convention Movement, which produced, as noted above, the Black Power conferences (1966–1968), the Black Arts Convention (1966), and the National Black Political Convention, in Gary, Indiana (1972). Out of this process at the national level, the movement produced the Congress of African People (1971), the National Black Assembly (1972), the Black Women’s United Front (1974), and the African Liberation Support Committee (1972). The Black Power Movement focused on massive political education, mobilization, and organization of the masses and radical confrontation with the established order. The urban revolts were seen as one of its political signatures and provoked adherents and support, as well as harsh criticism and suppression. Many of its leaders and adherents were arrested and imprisoned on various charges, which were denounced by the movement as “frame-ups” and political imprisonment, evidence of the racism and injustice of the system and the role of the police as an occupying army. The Black Power Movement also aided in the development of the Black Arts Movement, the Black Studies Movement and Black Studies, the Black Students’ Movement, Black liberation theology, Black consciousness among Black athletes and musicians, and the revival and expansion of pan-Africanism among African Americans. Moreover, it raised consciousness through a massive political and cultural
education process that reaffirmed Black people’s African origins and identities and called for cultural recovery and grounding. In this context emerged cultural initiatives and creations such as Kwanzaa, the Nguzo Saba (the Seven Principles), Kawaida philosophy, youth rites of passage programs, African value orientation, the signature Afro hairstyle, African fashions, African naming and life cycle ceremonies, the learning of African languages, the independent schools movement, and the building of various cultural institutions. Also, Black power advocates linked the African American freedom struggle with continental African and Third World liberation struggles. Out of these continental African and Third World linkages came added emphasis on cultural revolution and armed struggle and other concepts, like Ujamaa (African socialism and cooperative economics) and vanguard parties, and concepts of internal colonialism and liberated zones as alternating conditions of the Black community. As an expression of Black Nationalism, the Black Power Movement had four basic thrusts: religious, cultural, economic, and political. Some of the groups that were representative of these were (a) religious: the Nation of Islam and the Shrine of the Black Madonna; (b) cultural: Us, the East, the Spirit House, the Institute of Positive Education, and Ahidiana; (c) economic: the Congress of Racial Equality and the Opportunities Industrial Center; and (d) political: the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa. Some groups, like the Nation of Islam and Us, included more than one or all of these thrusts within their organizational agendas and initiatives. The Black Power Movement declined and disappeared in the 1970s as a result of both police suppression through the FBI Cointelpro initiative and mistakes and conflicts within the movement itself. But it has had a lasting impact on the way African Americans identify, understand, and assert themselves in cultural and political terms, and it reinforced their stress on self-determination, cultural recovery, community power, and social struggle. Maulana Karenga See also African Americans; African American Studies; Afrocentricity; Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Carmichael, Stokely; Chicano Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Kwanzaa; Malcolm X; Marxism and Racism; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Blockbusting
Further Readings
Barbour, Floyd B. 1968. The Black Power Revolt. Boston, MA: Porter Sargent. Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. 1967. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage Books. Karenga, Maulana. 2002. “The Black Power Movement.” Pp. 190–202 in Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press. Van Deburg, William L. 1992. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture 1965–1975. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
BLOCKBUSTING Blockbusting, a term that is well-known in real estate circles, refers to the intentional exploitation of racial fears to induce White families to sell their homes to Black families, leading to rapid racial transition from all-White to all-Black neighborhoods. Such panic peddling, quite common during the 1950s and 1960s, took advantage of the limited home ownership opportunities for Blacks, widespread racial prejudice on the part of Whites, and the fear of what Black neighbors might mean for property values—to generate sales and commissions for unscrupulous real estate agents. Along the way, many White families lost much of the investment they had made in their homes; Blacks were able to purchase homes, but on exploitative terms; communities experienced much disruption; and racial fears and hostility increased—while real estate agents and their partners among mortgage-lending institutions and other housing-related financial service providers reaped huge profits. Blockbusting was declared unlawful under the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968. But its impact on the segregation of the nation’s housing markets persists. To fully understand the nature and impact of blockbusting, it is important to place the practice in the context of ongoing patterns of segregation and competing explanations for those patterns. While Black/White segregation has marginally declined nationwide in recent years, in large cities where the Black population remains highly concentrated (e.g., New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee), it has persisted at high levels. The index of dissimilarity remains at around .80 in those metropolitan areas where most of the nation’s Black population continues to reside. (This index is a commonly used measure of segregation that
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varies from 0, where every neighborhood reflects the racial composition of the entire community, to 1.00, where every neighborhood is either all-White or allBlack. Scores over .60 are generally considered quite high, reflecting highly segregated cities.) Segregation scores for Hispanics and Asians are considerably lower, closer to .4 or .5, but they have increased in recent years. Segregation is not just a statistical artifact. It poses severe challenges to minority households that are separated from mainstream society. Schools in nonWhite communities tend to be inferior in almost every way (e.g., per-pupil funding, facilities, teacher experience, graduation, and drop-out rates). Streets are more dangerous. Health care is less readily available. Mainstream financial institutions leave, and so-called fringe bankers (e.g., check-cashing outlets, payday lenders, pawnshops, rent-to-own stores) move in. Jobs disappear, along with valuable social networks for learning about employment opportunities. As Douglas Massey, coauthor of the classic book American Apartheid, has often observed, barriers to spatial mobility are barriers to social mobility. Contrary to conventional wisdom, segregation indeed reflects barriers. It is commonly believed today that most racial and ethnic barriers in the nation’s housing market (and elsewhere as well) have virtually broken down, with remaining patterns of segregation reflecting a combination of individual choices and preferences of people to live among their “own kind” as well as economic barriers that sort people by financial status across diverse communities. From this perspective, because racial and ethnic minorities earn lower-than-average salaries and have fewer economic resources, it would be expected that Whites and non-Whites would be distributed unevenly across neighborhoods. The social science evidence, however, clearly demonstrates that a range of discriminatory public policies and private practices have long been far more influential in determining the racial and ethnic composition of the nation’s neighborhoods. Public opinion polls show that the overwhelming number of minority families would prefer an integrated to a segregated community. And research shows that racial minorities at all socioeconomic levels encounter unlawful discrimination in the nation’s housing markets. Such practices reflect several long traditions. In the early decades of the Federal Housing Administration, the agency’s underwriting guidelines
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virtually required segregation as a condition for qualifying for a federally insured mortgage, and almost every FHA mortgage from the inception of the program in the 1930s through most of the 1960s went to White families. Enforcement of racially restrictive covenants ensured that properties would continue to be occupied only by members of the same race. Concentration of public housing in the nation’s inner cities trapped many poor, non-White (usually African American) families in segregated ghettos. Federally subsidized highways facilitated the commuting of White suburbanites between their homes and downtown jobs. Exclusionary zoning laws by suburban municipalities still restrict the number of multifamily housing units (e.g., apartments) and other affordable homes, limiting the number of low-income and disproportionately minority residents. Such public policies have been reinforced by private industry practices. Redlining by banks and insurance companies undercut homeownership opportunities for minority households and all residents of predominantly non-White neighborhoods. Racial steering by real estate and rental agents, which has increased in recent years, contributes to these patterns. Blockbusting was a particularly egregious but effective tactic in shaping the racial demography of U.S. cities in what, for many, was their formative years during the 1950s and 1960s. Even if blockbusting has faded in recent years, it nonetheless constituted a key part of a set of practices that continue to maintain a highly segregated pattern of urban and suburban living in the United States today. Another important contextual dimension is the fact that blockbusting “worked” only because of the severely limited homeownership opportunities that long existed for racial and ethnic minorities. Discrimination kept Blacks in particular “in their place.” However, as the number of Black residents grew during the post–World War II years, cities simply had to find more space for housing. Unscrupulous real estate agents exploited this housing shortage, fears on the part of many city residents of declining property values if Blacks moved in, and White racism generally. Tactics varied. Sales agents would often phone, mail, or just visit White homeowners offering to purchase their homes, warning them that the value of their homes might well be dropping in the near future as more Blacks moved in. Sometimes, they would hire Black mothers to walk their strollers up and down the sidewalks of White neighborhoods or hire Black teenagers to drive their cars through the streets. Though perhaps subtle, the message was quite clear.
Many local communities have responded to these practices, as did the federal government when it banned blockbusting in the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In places like Oak Park, Illinois, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, groups have initiated a wide range of policies to nurture stable racial integration. These policies include local bans on blockbusting, limits on the use of for-sale signs, mortgage programs whereby families receive financial incentives to make a “pro-integration” move, and coaxing local real estate agents to practice “reverse steering” by encouraging Whites and non-Whites to make pro-integration moves. At least some cities and metropolitan areas are more diverse today, and these efforts have contributed to those emerging patterns. Even if the more overt forms of blockbusting and discrimination have faded in recent years and some city as well as suburban communities have become more diverse, segregation persists as a central feature of the nation’s metropolitan areas. This is due largely to the legacy and continuing reality of several forms of the discrimination that has long played out in U.S. housing markets. Gregory D. Squires See also American Apartheid; Discrimination in Housing; Gautreaux Decision; Ghetto; Housing Audits; Public Housing; Racism; Redlining; Resegregation; Restrictive Covenants; Segregation; White Flight
Further Readings
Gotham, Kevin F. 2002. “Beyond Invasion and Succession: School Segregation, Real Estate Blockbusting, and the Political Economy of Neighborhood Racial Transition.” City and Community 1(1):83–112. Hirsch, Arnold R. 1983. Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago 1940–1960. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Keating, W. Dennis. 1994. The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Massey, Douglas S. 2001. “Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Conditions in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.” Pp. 391–434 in America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, vol. 1, edited by N. J. Smelser, W. J. Wilson, and F. Mitchell. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Blood Quantum
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Orser, W. Edward. 1994. Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Emonsdson Village Story. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Sugrue, Thomas J. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BLOOD QUANTUM Blood quantum, a concept that evolved during the period of chattel slavery to distinguish African Americans from Whites, refers to the proportion of a particular ancestry a person has. It was also used by the U.S. government to categorize Native Americans, and, ironically, the racist concept was later adopted by Native Americans. For example, according to blood quantum, a person whose father is full-blood and whose mother is not Native American would be considered one-fourth Native American. Historically, and in contemporary society, tribes have used blood quantum as one of the criteria to determine enrollment in a tribe. For example, the Apache use a minimum blood quantum of oneeighth, while the Navajo requires one-fourth. This entry will consider the historical significance of blood quantum, social significance, and current debates about it.
Historical Significance Among Native people, blood quantum is an ingrained fact of everyday existence. As a construct, blood quantum is a construct that attempts to calculate the degree of racial inheritance for individuals. The concept embodies the assumption of racial purity and degree of racial mixture, carrying with it implications for social, economic, and political rights and statuses. Since its origin and institutional interjection into numerous federal policies concerning peoples of indigenous decent, it remains one of the most controversial and divisive issues afflicting contemporary Native North America. The origins of blood quantum are directly linked to the development of chattel slavery. By 1661, the institution of slavery was formally recognized by Virginia. Over the next 4 decades, other colonies formalized slavery as a legal economic and social institution. Paralleling the development of slavery was the evolving construction and separation of races on the basis of phenotype.
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Using color along with other phenotypic characteristics to define racial and social inferiority was supported by a growing body of philosophical and scientific literature in that era that held that Africans, Native Americans, and mulattoes possessed inferior intellectual, moral, and social qualities that stood in direct opposition to “whiteness” and its inherent qualities. Race and racism became part of the North American political economic landscape. Blood quantum came to be used to track racial ancestry and define legal rights. In 1705, the state of Virginia enacted a series of laws to deny civil liberties to any Negro, mulatto, or Indian. The law also applied to generations, defining children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as inferior members of society based on ancestry. Following Virginia’s example, other colonies adopted similar laws, using blood quantum as a mechanism to determine status, privilege, and rights of a free person or slave. The growing body of laws, although originally rooted in the institution of chattel slavery, evolved into a legal and social system that measured the extent of participation and privileges associated with full citizenship under the banner of “whiteness.” Once blood quantum became established as a mechanism for assessing inferiority, its use continued unabated into the 19th century. Increasingly, the development and progress of U.S. society was guided by the belief in the nation’s racial destiny. Dr. Samuel Morton’s 1839 publication, Crania Americana, asserted that Native Americans had a “deficiency of higher mental powers” and an “inaptitude for civilization,” making it impossible for Natives and Europeans to interact. Thus, the building of an American civilization, including its future social and moral development, would be determined by its racial composition. The construction of an Anglo-Saxon nation that extended from one coast to the other under the policy of Manifest Destiny required the further separation of the races. Removal of indigenous populations using the Indian Removal Act of May 28, 1830, provided one strategy for physically separating the races. Another was the passage of laws prohibiting marriages between European Americans and inferior races. North Carolina, early on, passed a code that forbade marriages between Whites and Indians, Negroes, mulattoes, or any other mixed person to the third generation. Through time, such blood quantum laws concerning race mixing became not only widespread but also more pervasive.
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After the Civil War, new racial questions arose. Foremost was whether “inferior racial stocks” could be assimilated into the national fold and whether these “races” would promote national progress. These questions coincided with the acceptance of Darwinian evolutionary principles that predicted a unity of humankind. The application of Darwinian evolution was also extended to the development of social complexity, not just biology. Therefore, it was held that all societies must follow similar trajectories in biosocial development, opening the possibility for the incorporation of inferior races. By the 1880s, the surviving Native American societies were placed on reservations. For some policymakers, reservations were considered a refuge for a declining race; they believed that Native Americans could be salvaged by forcing them out of their “inferior” state, breaking up the habits of savagery, and replacing them with the accoutrements of civilization. Using evolutionary theory and scientific racism as guiding principles, ethnocide from 1880 until 1934 became officially instituted toward solving the “Indian problem.” Blood quantum, an insidious expression of scientific racism, became the centerpiece in many federal policies of forced assimilation. The premises that biophysical characteristics, mental attributes, and cultural capabilities were imparted through a “race’s” blood, found a home in the management of Indian affairs through the passage of the 1887 General Allotment Act, which provided land and certain other benefits according to the degree of Indian blood among the allottees.
Social Significance Blood quantum linked forced assimilation with scientific racism by providing a legal definition of Native American. The allotment process required the compilation of formal tribal rolls, listing individuals belonging to each recognized reservation tribe. While the act posited no specific criteria by which this would be accomplished, Indian agents used the blood quantum “standards,” an already established mechanism for delineating racial descent. Once established, blood quantum was used by the Indian office not only to track “civilized progress” but also to assign entitlements to enrolled tribal members and define the extent of wardship restrictions. In the racialist configuration to construct and regulate Indian identity, “full-bloods” were deemed racially incapable of managing their own affairs and were issued trust patents for their allotments. “Mixed-bloods,” by virtue
of their “White” racial ancestry, were deemed more competent, often receiving patents in simple fee. Section 6 of the Dawes Act specifies that an Indian who had “adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States,” with all the entitled rights. Competency, or the adoption of civilization, equated with being biologically and socially “White” enough, meaning that such an individual was no longer defined as being “Indian.” The blatant preferential treatment bestowed upon those of mixed ancestry would eventually drive societal wedges, based on the false assumption of race, into indigenous societies that did not exist prior to the reservation period. Recent research concludes that there is little genetic distinction among America’s Indigenous Peoples, despite the precontact cultural diversity across Native North America. Tribal boundaries and ethnic distinctiveness did not inhibit a high degree of reproductive exchange between distinct societies. Thus, prior to establishing blood quantum to define racial identity, social kinship rather than biology was the core component of both societal composition and individual ethnic affiliation. Every Aboriginal society employed a number of sociological mechanisms—adoption, marriage, capture, and naturalization—for the incorporation of individuals and groups from foreign societies. After colonization, numerous Europeans and Africans were fully integrated into Native American societies. Escaped African slaves, for example, typically were accepted among Native peoples. Whether African or European, their host societies incorporated them without any phenotypic or cultural stigma. Over the course of history, most indigenous nations periodically integrated people from other societies. Such processes negated genetic distinctions. By the turn of the century, however, most Native American societies replaced these social mechanisms for defining their communities with blood quantum. The substitution ensured that Native Americans would evaluate each other, phenotypically and culturally, through the prism of racialist criteria. As Indian policy evolved, blood quantum expanded to determine eligibility for federal resources and services, to permit tribal membership, and to delineate economic and political benefits. Blood quantum criteria became internalized among Native American communities with the passage of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). Most IRA constitutions adopted blood quantum as a criterion for defining ethnic identity, tribal enrollment, and tribal citizenship. By advancing the prevailing quantum standard, a living vestige of 19th-century scientific racism, many Native
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Americans began to use it as the litmus test for defining “Indianness.”
Contemporary Debates Many Native Americans are now indoctrinated into assessing each other in terms of blood quantum. This has led to a continual evaluation of cultural competence and social acceptance based largely on phenotypic characteristics. At a conference of Native American scholars held in February 1993, under the auspices of the Center for Indian Education, Arizona State University, the issue of “ethnic fraud” arose. Native American scholars in attendance were disturbed by the number of academics in U.S. universities falsely claiming to have Indian ancestry in order to receive educational and hiring benefits. The discussion led to six recommendations. The number one recommendation is to require documentation of enrollment in a state or federally recognized tribe, giving hiring preference to those who meet this criterion. Allegations of “ethnic fraud” continue to surface not only on college campuses but also across Indian Country. Three years before the conference, the 1990 passage of the Act for the Protection of American Indian Arts and Crafts deemed it a criminal offense for anyone not enrolled in a federally recognized tribe to identify themselves as American Indian while selling art. Critics claim that after its passage, “identity monitors” scoured Native American art venues demanding to see the documentation of anyone suspected of committing ethnic fraud. The evaluation of ethnic identity using blood quantum has resulted in a rise in infighting and on occasion outright race-baiting between and among indigenous people. Within many reservations and indigenous communities, blood quantum is a contentious issue, often distorted by the blind acceptance of the concept. Native American demographic data reveal that during the 20th century and beyond, there has been an increasing mixture between tribal members and non-Native peoples. These trends have not only continued but accelerated, raising concerns among some about preserving tribal biological and cultural purity. Some reservation tribal leaders are arguing that tribal constitutions should be amended, this time to purge enrolled members who married non-Natives or to raise blood quantum levels on the premise that such measures are vital to maintain the integrity of the tribal identity. Most tragic, some traditionalists on various reservations have taken up the banner of racial politics.
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Ignoring principles of kinship affiliation and other cultural practices for the incorporation of other people, some traditionalists have adopted blood quantum as the singular “traditionalist belief.” The implications of using blood quantum are evident in every aspect of contemporary Native American life. A Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) or Certificate of Degree of Alaska Native Blood is issued to determine citizenship in a specific federally recognized tribe or indigenous community. Enrolled members with a CDIB are entitled to or denied rights and the allocation of resources. In 1985, Congress passed the Quarter Blood Amendment Act to determine which Native American students are eligible for Native education programs and tuition-free assistance at the Bureau of Indian Affairs or contract schools. The act requires that the one-quarter blood degree be documented with a CDIB. The internalization of European America’s conception of race through the adoption of blood quantum by Native peoples, along with the virulence with which it is being manifested in indigenous communities, represents a culmination of federal colonial policies originating nearly 300 years ago. Native North America, some critical scholars claim, has been rendered selfcolonizing, if not self-liquidating. Over the centuries, blood quantum divorced thousands of people from their Native American ethnic heritage through arbitrarily defining who is or is not a person of Native American descent. For some individuals, blood quantum is a eugenics policy designed to “statistically exterminate” the remaining Native American people. For others, it is a mechanism to legitimately define who may claim to be Native American. Blood quantum, as a concept, will remain a contested arena on the cultural and political landscape of Native North America. Gregory R. Campbell See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Dawes Act of 1887; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Intermarriage; Multiracial Identity; Native American Health Care; Identity; Native American Identity, Legal Background; Native Americans; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Reservation System
Further Readings
Campbell, Gregory R. 1994. “The Politics of Counting: Critical Reflections about the Depopulation Question of Native North America.” Pp. 67–131 in The Unheard Voices: American Indian Responses to the Columbian Quincentenary, 1492–1992, edited by C. M. Gentry and
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D. A. Grinde, Jr. Los Angeles: University of California, American Indian Studies Center. Campbell, Gregory R., ed. 2001. Many Americas: Critical Perspectives on Race, Racism, and Ethnicity. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt. Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. 1993. “Meeting of Indian Professors Takes Up Issues of ‘Ethnic Fraud,’ Sovereignty, and Research Needs.” Wicazo Sa Review 11(1):57–59. Crawford, Michael Herman. 2001. The Origins of Native Americans: Evidence from Anthropological Genetics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Forbes, Jack D. 2000. “Blood Quantum: A Relic of Racism and Termination.” Native Intelligence from The People’s Voice. Retrieved from http://www.weyanoke.org/jdfBloodQuantum.html Gould, Stephen J. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Jaimes, M. Annette. 1992. “Federal Identification Policy: An Usurpation of Indigenous Sovereignty in North America.” Pp. 123–138 in The State of Native America, Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. A. Jaimes. Boston, MA: South End Press. Jones, Nicholas A. 2005. We the People of More Than One Race in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Moore, John H. 1992. “Blood Quantum and How Not to Count Indians.” Unpublished lecture, April 9, University of Montana, Department of Anthropology, Missoula. Ogunwole, Stella U. 2006. We the People: American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Stannard, William. 1960. The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815–59. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Thornton, Russell. 1987. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Tobar, Hector. 2001. “Thinning Bloodlines.” Missoulian. January 23, B1.
BOAS, FRANZ (1858–1942) Franz Boas, a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States, received a doctorate in physics from Kiel University in Germany in 1881 and went on to found American professional anthropology. As the chairman of what would become the famed department of anthropology at Columbia University between 1901 and his retirement in 1935, Boas transformed anthropology
from a field that was primarily the domain of amateurs who worked for the U.S. government or museums on the Northeastern seaboard of the United States—for example, Daniel Garrison Brinton, John Wesley Powell, and W. J. McGee—to a professional, academic discipline in American universities. Before 1920, Boas trained a cadre of distinguished students who included such notables as Alexander Goldenweiser, Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, and Edward Sapir. After 1920, his students included Melville J. Herskovits, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mead, Otto Klineberg, and Ashley Montagu. By the 1950s, virtually all of the major anthropologists in the United States had been trained under Boas or one of his students. Of greater significance is that Boas’s pioneering development of the concept of culture ushered in a revolution in the social scientific discourses on the issues of race and racial capabilities. As this entry shows, Boas engendered a shift in preoccupation of the social sciences with racial hierarchies that rationalized northern and western European and EuropeanAmerican dominance over non-White peoples both at home and abroad, as well as over southern and eastern European peoples, who during this period were viewed as persons whose race was to some appreciable degree different and distinct from northern and western Europeans. Boas and his students demonstrated that the data about human differences could be explained more precisely in cultural terms than in the expansive racial terms used by evolutionary anthropologists, evident in supraindividual phrases such as racial soul, racial essence, racial spirit, and racial temperament. Furthermore, Boas was an activist who used the tools of science to support the reform agenda of many varied and different racial and ethnic minorities. His life, in fact, ended because of a heart attack brought on by his vituperative denunciation of the Nazi exterminations of so-called inferior stocks during World War II.
Boas as a Cultural Anthropologist As a starting point, Boas’s contribution to the discussion of comparative racial capabilities may be seen as a powerful reaction against 19th-century racial science. Boas himself was a member of a persecuted ethnic minority. His face was scarred during sword duels with anti-Semites in the increasingly intolerant climate of Bismarck’s Germany, and he later witnessed the augmenting nativism that arose as a consequence of the
Boas, Franz (1858–1942)
influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century in the United States. Boas tried to assist in stemming the tide of obdurate racial intolerance and hatred. He was especially skeptical of the self-serving claims of cultural evolutionists— for example, Edward B. Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, and John Lubbock—who drew on Charles Darwin’s work to develop the theory of cultural evolution. These men argued that three distinct and discrete categories defined the stages of cultural development: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. By assuming that their civilization was the most progressive and the standard by which other cultures should be judged, these Victorian ethnologists were extremely ethnocentric. Beginning with the publication of his vicepresidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1894, titled “Human Faculty as Determined by Race,” and culminating in the publication of his magnum opus, The Mind of Primitive Man, in 1911, Boas qualified the arguments of the Victorian ethnologists. Through his particularistic, empirical approach to the study of cultures, Boas demonstrated that the armchair anthropologists had confounded achievement with an aptitude for achievement. As a consequence, Boas argued that Western civilization could be accounted for on the basis of historical events rather than on the White race’s purported mental faculties. For example, he argued that purported differences between so-called civilized man and primitive man in mental functions, abstraction, inhibition, and choice were a matter of degree, not of kind. Having confronted anti-Semitism in his native Germany, Boas was especially troubled by the practical fact that prejudicial values aided and abetted the perpetuation of the low status assigned to African Americans in the American social order. Although Boas thought that some of the contemporaneous negative stereotypes of African Americans were true, he did not believe that indigenous West Africans conformed to some of those same stereotypes. In an article that was published in the Southern Workman in 1909, titled “Industries of the African Negroes,” Boas attacked three weaknesses in the argument of proponents of Black inferiority. First, using the example of a West African village market, he argued that stereotypes suggesting that West Africans were innately indolent and unable to defer gratification were fallacious. Second, Boas attacked the stereotypes of Blacks as lacking strong willpower, presenting evidence that some African leaders had
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succeeded in organizing large empires that had endured for long stretches of history. Furthermore, Boas discredited the myth that Whites had made the most significant historical achievements by arguing that African Blacks were perhaps the first race to invent iron implements. In essence, he said, the inability of African Americans to rival the industrial, artistic, and political achievements of their African brethren was due not to any congenital inferiority, but instead to the brutal environment in which they had been forced to live for so many years.
Boas as a Physical Anthropologist Between 1894 and 1911, Boas attacked the racial orthodoxy of the period, which was based on the assessments of comparative anthropometric measurements of the body parts of members of the White and non-White races. Anthropometric measurements were performed as early as the 1830s by such distinguished scientists as Samuel G. Morton, John Bachman, Josiah Nott, George Gliddon, and Louis Agassiz. Their assessments were later supported by the Union Army Surgeons’ studies during the Civil War and by the French craniometrican and father of European physical anthropology, Paul Broca. Rejecting their assessments, which were based on the relatively simple mathematical techniques of means, medians, and percentiles, Boas used correlational calculus to demonstrate the overlapping distribution of anthropometric measurements. As a result, he concluded that all Whites were not superior to all non-Whites. Thus, although non-Whites might not produce as great a proportion of “men of high genius” and their average achievement might not match the average achievement of Whites, all non-Whites were not inferior to all Whites. Boas, in essence, was making a formidable case for “approximate” equality, “individual” differences, and “virtual” equality—terms seldom used in contemporary scholarship. In his examination and analysis of White ethnicities, particularly southern and eastern European immigrant groups, Boas argued, unlike most scholars of race, that the head form was not as hitherto believed. When he was appointed to the U.S. Immigration Commission, established in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt, he investigated the effects the new American environment had on 17,281 southern and eastern European immigrants and their children. His arguments, encapsulated in the multivolume Change in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants
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in 1912, suggested that human types were not stable and that the degree of their plasticity was determined by the environment. When these findings were dismissed, he was understandably upset and irate. Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which imposed quotas that had the net effect of drastically reducing immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
Boas the Activist Finally, Boas was an intellectual activist. In 1906, at the request of W. E. B. Du Bois, Boas delivered a commencement address at Atlanta University, in which he extolled the value of African culture. His speech at the National Negro Conference in 1910, reprinted in The Crisis, a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, advocated Black-White amalgamation. As previously discussed, he took significant initiative in attempting to combat nativism and xenophobia directed against the “new immigrants.” Although racism, xenophobia, and nativism have survived Boas, he bequeathed to the United States an intellectual tradition that was equipped to sustain a long, protracted struggle against the forces of reaction. Vernon J. Williams, Jr. See also African Americans; Anti-Semitism; Cultural Relativism; Immigration, U.S.; Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; Race; Racism; Social Darwinism
Further Readings
Cole, Douglas. 1999. Franz Boas. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hyatt, Marshall. 1990. Franz Boas. New York: Greenwood Press. Stocking, George W. 1968. Race, Culture, and Evolution. New York: Basic Books. Williams, Vernon, Jr. 1996. Rethinking Race. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
term refers specifically to groups of people who leave home in small fishing boats and sometimes makeshift rafts, seeking asylum abroad. During the 20th century, the most significant movements of such “boat people”—at least from an American perspective— began in the 1960s, with Cubans, Haitians, and Vietnamese. These groups are the focus of this entry. It should be noted, however, that new crises since the end of the cold war have provoked new waves of boat people in other regions. The Mediterranean has recently seen a steady flow of such people from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia faces a similar situation of people arriving from neighboring islands. Also critical to fully understanding the term boat people is that beneath its purely descriptive meaning lies a more sinister intention of stigmatizing and racializing poor, desperate immigrants. These perceptions, in turn, shape public opinion and official policies toward these immigrants, governing their fates wherever they settle.
Southeast Asia In the 20-year period that followed the fall of Saigon in April 1975, an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese fled the country in search of asylum. The first to flee, about 135,000, were primarily officials with ties to the United States, who feared reprisals under the new regime and were airlifted out of Vietnam beginning in 1975. The deteriorating economic and political conditions in Vietnam in the late 1970s triggered a second—and much larger—wave of out-migration, composed for the most part of unskilled workers (merchants, small farmers, and fishermen). These refugees, many of whom were ethnic Chinese, were often forced to embark on perilous journeys by boat, bound for Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. By way of these countries, Vietnamese boat people eventually came to the United States. However, unlike their predecessors, they encountered a great deal of hostility from local communities and continue to struggle today against enduring negative stereotypes.
Cuba and Haiti
“BOAT PEOPLE” The term “boat people” is typically used to identify those who leave their homelands by sea during political upheaval or economic crisis. As used today, the
The first Cubans to leave the island after Castro came to power in 1959 were wealthy industrialists, financiers, and officials of the defeated Batista government. During the period between the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the United States faced off against the Soviet Union over the
Body Image
presence of missiles in Cuba, and the Camarioca exodus of 1965, Cuba experienced a short-lived flight of emigrants known as balseros (rafters), headed to the United States. After 1965, other Cubans were able to leave aboard the Freedom Flights. However, Castro’s reversal of this agreement in 1973 forced Cubans to look for alternative ways out. Following a three-way standoff in April 1980, between the Cuban government, the Peruvian government, and the 10,000 Cubans who had occupied the Peruvian embassy in Havana, Castro opened an escape hatch, the port of Mariel, for all who wanted to leave, allowing Cuban exiles in Miami to come on boats to retrieve their relatives. Over the course of the next 6 months, an estimated 125,000 Cubans made the journey from Mariel to Florida aboard boats chartered by their relatives. These newcomers became known as “Marielitos”. As various crises befell Cuba over the next 15 years, the outflow of balseros continued, ebbing at times, rising at others, and reaching new heights in 1994, when over 20,000 Cubans set sail for the United States in the month of August alone. Since then, Cubans like Elián González have continued to come to the United States by sea, but they now do so aboard speedboats (not rafts) as part of highly organized smuggling operations based on the assurance of legal acceptance for those with “dry feet.” Their means of escape from Cuba was not the primary characteristic that distinguished “Marielitos” and balseros from earlier waves of Cuban immigrants (1959–1979). Instead, the disparaging labels attached to the “boat people” are the result of smear campaigns orchestrated by the Castro government, designed to portray them as outcasts. The apprehension felt toward Cuban boat people in the United States is a testament to the campaign’s effectiveness. The first Haitian boat people arrived in the United States in 1963. Their numbers increased sharply over the next 20 years. The first Haitian refugees who came to the United States, dubbed “the airplane people,” were middle class and received a generally sympathetic reception. Those who came by sea, on the other hand, were mostly working class. Coming mostly in two major waves, in the early 1980s and again in 1993, they were perceived as a threat to U.S. economic and social stability and were treated with contempt, particularly in Florida. What distinguished Haitian boat people from their Cuban cousins were the alleged racial and ideological
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preferences on the part of U.S. authorities for “refugees from communism” and against Blacks.
Conclusion Despite the obvious perils of long voyages in ramshackle boats, many refugees still regard the sea as the path of least resistance. Usually poor and unskilled, they often flee their countries under the most hazardous conditions. Given their demographic profiles, those who survive the expedition are often met with enduring prejudice and discrimination, even from those who share their ethnic and national origins. Mohamed Wann and Ted Henken See also Asylum; Cuban Americans; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; “Marielitos”; Refugees; Vietnamese Americans
Further Readings
Ackerman, Holly. 1996. “The Balsero Phenomenon, 1991–1994.” Cuban Studies 26:169. Bardach, Ann L. 2002. Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. New York: Random House. Henken, Ted. 2005. “Balseros, Boteros, and El Bombo: Post-1994 Cuban Immigration to the United States and the Persistence of Special Treatment.” Latino Studies 3:393–416. McDougall, Julie and Don Fletcher. 2002. “Dehumanizing the Boat People.” Social Alternatives 21:4. Stepick, Alex. 1992. “Unintended Consequences: Rejecting Haitian Boat People and Destabilizing Duvalier.” Pp. 125–155 in Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy, edited by C. Mitchell. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Woods, L. Shelton. 2002. Vietnam: A Global Studies Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
BODY IMAGE The human body is understood as both a physiological creation and a social construct. Individuals experience their bodies through a web of interconnected meaning and practices defined by the societies in which they live. Bodies are reflections of social norms, cultural practices, identity, and self-expression. Therefore, it is
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not surprising that issues of race and ethnicity play a role in this social construct, along with gender and standards of beauty, as this entry shows.
Sex and Gender The organization of gender within a society (e.g., male, female, and transgender) and the socialization of individuals into the expected roles and behaviors disparately associated with each gender inform how people manage perceptions of their bodies. Individuals follow these norms of gendered behavior because their identities and self-esteem are determined by the extent to which they meet social expectations. There are high social rewards for women and men performing their gender roles according to socially acceptable norms. Social relationships, familial ties, and upward social mobility are all connected to how well individuals perform gender roles. For those who fall outside of the traditional Western cultural binary of male and female, for example, transgender individuals, social consequences are high, including alienation from both formal and informal social and familial networks and discrimination in the public sphere. Sociologists of gender argue that differences between men and women that have historically been thought of as biological or natural are actually produced through social practices that persuade men and women to use their bodies differently. Sex and gender are two social categories that are often intertwined. Sex is a category of self-identification and presentation that is assumed to be congruent with biological criteria for classification as female or male. These biological criteria include chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, and procreative organs. Gender is a category based on the sex assigned at birth, which produces patterns of social expectations for bodies, behavior, emotions, and family and work roles. Gender display is the way that individuals manage their presentation of self as a gendered body through the use of symbols, attitudes, and physical activities appropriate to their sex category. Men are often expected to be confident, rational actors, while women are often expected to be nurturing and obedient. Gender also determines social roles, like those of mother and father and the type of worker one becomes, for example, domestic caregiver (female) versus corporate executive (male). Gender behaviors are valued differently and produce different social outcomes for men and women. While women entered
the workforce at varying positions en masse in the latter part of the 20th century, they are still overwhelmingly in positions that earn significantly lower wages than men earn. Men and women have a different relationship with their bodies, which has direct implications for how men and women are situated within the domestic sphere and the labor force. In terms of body norms, there is a double standard of beauty for men and women. Men and women relate to their bodies differently, and while men are socialized to be concerned with their bodies, physical appearance plays a greater role in societal perceptions and treatment of women. In Western cultures, women have been associated with nature—body, land, childbirth, caregiving—while men have been associated with culture—the mind, abstract reason. Human dominion over nature and the mind’s domination over the body is embodied in the male/female dichotomy. Ideas about women and the body have an influence on gender ideologies and reinforce what is called biological determinism, or the tendency to see women in terms of their reproductive and biological selves. Gender studies scholars incorporate nuanced analyses of the social construction of gender and the impact of stereotypical roles on both male and female perceptions of body ideals. However, feminist scholars emphasize the disparate relations of power between men and women; they assert that the body and its expression have stronger repercussions for women’s lives.
Body and Beauty Ideals Norms and ideals about standard body shapes are culturally expressed in intentional and unintentional ways. Boys and girls learn these standards from a young age through the types of toys and play activity that are encouraged by adults. Girls are represented in the tall, busty image of the Barbie doll. Although she has morphed into many identities that represent women of varying employment statuses and ethnicities, the doll’s basic body frame remains a constant illustration of what girls should strive for. Boys learn their place in society through the buff, tanned, militarily trained action figures that symbolize strength, endurance, and courage. Boys are taught that they are the protectors of both society and home. Boys often develop a connected relationship with their bodies because they learn that masculinity is defined through physical strength and intellectual development. Girls often develop a negative association with their bodies
Body Image
because femininity is defined through physical beauty and deference to male authority. Beauty ideals reflect various relations of power in society. In U.S. society, beauty ideals are connected to the production and consumption of products that enhance body aesthetics and morph phenotype. The industries of fashion, cosmetics, hair, diet and exercise, food, entertainment, advertising, and plastic surgery make a profit from maintaining the beauty myth. Popular media reinforce the myth by recycling images of tough, virile men juxtaposed with petite, demure women whose role is to be rescued by the former. A significant element of power in society is race. A culture develops a standard of beauty that approximates the appearance of those who are in power. Therefore, in many White-dominated societies, light skin color comes to be viewed as positive. Lighterskinned Latinos and African Americans often come to be labeled as more attractive, getting an edge in employment, modeling, entertainment, and even interpersonal activities such as dating. Consumers also internalize these norms and receive positive and negative reinforcement for conforming to or resisting them. People engage in what are called disciplinary practices, or the taken-forgranted routinized behaviors that involve social control, in that people spend time, money, and effort on the practices and invest them with meaning. These practices include shaving, applying makeup, and altering hair by using any number of chemical products and electric hardware. For women, these practices are tied to staying thin, petite, and young.
Eating-Disordered Behavior While eating disorders function on an individual level, they are culturally mediated through environmental conditions associated with the politics of gender and sexuality. Scholars think about this behavior in two ways. The first set of behaviors is referred to as eating disorders, which include anorexia nervosa (selfstarvation), bulimia nervosa (binge eating with vomiting and/or laxative use), compulsive eating (uncontrolled eating), and muscle dysmorphia (fear of being not sufficiently muscled). The second set of behaviors is known as general eating-disordered behavior, which includes occasional binging, fasting, compulsive food habits, obsessive dieting, and overexercising. Eating disorders affect primarily young women. According to the National Association of Anorexia
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Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), the age of onset of eating disorders is getting younger (age 11 to 17 is identified as a time of increased vulnerability). For adults, the approximate ratio of eating disorders among men to women is 1:10. About 20% to 30% of younger anorexics are male. Up to 20% of individuals with serious eating disorders die as a result of complications of their disorder, which include heart problems, chemical imbalances, and suicide. Eating disorders and disordered behavior typically stem from individual body dysmorphia, or an excessive preoccupation with perceived flaws in appearance. Scholars note that this behavior is directly associated with societal pressure primarily for women to meet cultural standards of beauty and attractiveness, or what is referred to as the “culture of thinness.” Body manipulation also symbolizes the value of women and girls in society, which affects selfesteem and the mental and physical health of women.
Intersections The intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation also plays a role in how individuals experience their bodies. Body dissatisfaction is often attributed to societal standards of thinness and an ideal body type that privileges fair skin, light hair, and other European-descended features. Mainstream Western media imagery tends to homogenize female beauty and to create ideals against which women measure and discipline their bodies. Women of color are significantly impacted by this, and while their representations in beauty and fashion magazines are increasing, their images often reinforce prevailing stereotypes of lighter skin and European-descended features. A central theme in multiracial feminist perspectives, including Black feminism and Latina feminism, is the internalization of body image ideals for women of color. The politics of cultural representation as racialized and resistance through cultural affirmation is evidenced in the activism and discourse of feminists of the late 20th century who are women of color. Research suggests that Black women and Latinas are, on average, heavier than White women. While White women and women of higher-socioeconomic status tend to suffer from eating disorders at a higher rate, these rates are increasing for women of color. According to ANAD, eating disorders in the United States appear to be as common among Hispanic as they are among Caucasian women.
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Black women are more prone to bulimia nervosa and abuse of laxatives. Women of color tend to frame the discussion around body image in terms of body ethics—a set of values and beliefs regarding care and presentation of the body—versus body aesthetics ideals. These include cultural values regarding body care and presentation and personal and political commitments. Women of color also develop strategies of resistance for identifying affirming images of themselves and fostering a positive self-image. Scholars acknowledge the importance of culture and ethnicity in shaping how women develop positive ways of experiencing their bodies through cultural norms and practices. Mako Fitts See also Color Line; Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina; Gender and Race, Intersection of; hooks, bell; Internalized Racism; Labeling; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; One-Drop Rule; Racialization; Sexuality
Further Readings
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press. Kramer, Laura. 2005. The Sociology of Gender. 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Lorber, Judith and Lisa J. Moore. 2007. Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Pope, Harrison, Kate Phillips, and Roberto Olivardia. 2000. The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession. New York: Free Press. Rockquemore, Kerry A. 2002. “Negotiating the Color Line.” Gender & Society 16:485–503. Rubin, Lisa R., Mako L. Fitts, and Anne E. Becker. 2003. “‘Whatever Feels Good in My Soul’: Body Aesthetics and Aesthetics among African American and Latina Women.” Culture, Medicine, & Psychiatry 27:49–75. Shaw, Susan M. and Janet Lee. 1997. Women’s Voices Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
distinguish ethnic enclaves within the borders of a nation-state. In both situations, these boundary regions are referred to as borderlands, particularly when the political control of these regions is contested.
Definitions and Concepts Borders may first of all be seen as barriers to integration: A person or an organization that has involvement across a border is internationalizing, which has legal and often economic implications because of different legislative and financial systems in use in the political states separated by the border. The crossing of a border may, however, also imply a confrontation between regional, ethnic, or national identities. Such a confrontation is often expressed in terms of “us versus them” and often leads to biased perceptions of reality. Borders, then, may be seen as cultural and mental thresholds. Consequently, inhabitants of borderlands may feel marginalized by people of either or both political entities adjacent to their common border. Conceptually, borderlands are usually considered as culturally, politically, or economically peripheral. Depending on geographic locale and historical patterns of interaction of the peoples occupying border regions, inhabitants may or may not have a desire to integrate their regions with those more centrally located. They may also be concerned about transforming border regions to mitigate feelings of marginalization and alienation. A desire to be more fully integrated with the political or cultural entity from which they are separated by a border, however, is not necessarily the primary motivator of occupants of borderlands. Rather, occupants of these border regions may confine themselves, or be confined, to a ghetto. In locations such as Sudan and Nigeria, in Africa, and the region of Israel and its Arab neighbors, occupants of borderlands explicitly desire to segregate either themselves or the occupants of regions (their opponents) on the other side of their arbitrary borders.
Disputed Issues
BORDERLANDS Borderlands may be seen both as a concept and as a geographic entity. At the most obvious level, borderlands are geographic areas adjacent to political boundaries between nation-states, but the term is used also to
Another potential concern for nation-states with borderlands has to do with environmental issues. In the sister cities all along the U.S.–Mexico border, for example, smog is causing mercury poisoning, asthma symptoms, cardiac problems, and premature death. Pollution is contributing to global climate change and erosion of quality of life.
Borderlands
Whether borderlands are on land or at sea, their political control is typically in dispute. This dispute may have to do with commercial interests as well as with issues of national or ethnic sovereignty. Corporations engaged in primary industries, that is, the extraction of natural resources from the environment, frequently have a large stake in the demarcation, delimitation, and management of borderlands. Thus, matters affecting borderlands may be hotly contested. This concern regarding the disposition of borderland disputes relates particularly to globalization and the endeavors of multinational corporations (MNCs), whose interests lie in the maximization of profit with a minimum of government intervention. In any case, governments must necessarily become involved to protect the interests of their individual and corporate citizens. The pecuniary interests of corporations as well as individuals are shared by governments because of the promise of tax revenues, the provision of employment, and quality-of-life factors that contribute to the welfare of people and nation-states. Naturally, ownership and control of borderlands become matters of vital concern to sovereign governments, and governments seek to maximize both their territorial prerogatives and their international influence in borderland disputes. While it might appear on the surface as if borderland issues are prevalent only in “hotbeds” of political instability, such as the Middle East, the Balkan region, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, the presence of natural resources globally means that even nation-states that traditionally have amicable relations with neighbors may contest common borderlands. Thus, traditionally friendly neighbors like the United States and Canada, Mexico and the United States, and Canada and Iceland from time to time dispute common border regions. As a result of failed efforts to resolve border issues bilaterally, borderland disputes may be submitted to international tribunals for resolution. Agencies like the International Court of Justice and the International Boundaries Research Unit may be enlisted to arbitrate territorial claims, including problems associated with ownership or management of transborder resources. Agencies such as the International Boundaries Research Unit serve as consultants to government ministries, international organizations, multinational corporations, international law firms, oil and gas exploration companies, and shipping lines—all of
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which have a vested interest in both resource issues and, specifically, borderland concerns.
Examples of Border Conflicts Historically, there have been many border disputes between various nation-states. The end of World War II saw boundaries of many European nation-states redrawn, perhaps most notably those of Germany and Poland. Germany was divided into the pro-Western Federal Republic of Germany and the communist German Democratic Republic on the east. Since German unification in 1990, the two divisions have amalgamated. Poland, with an even longer history of partitioning, involving Prussia, Russia, and Austria and dating to the 16th century, regained its independence in 1918, only to become a Soviet satellite state following World War II. Its political boundaries have tended to be malleable as a result of wars and treaties among other nation-states such as Russia and Germany. Cyprus also has been prominent in international affairs because of historic borderland issues. The division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish enclaves followed ongoing tensions between Turkish occupants in the northern part of the island and Greek Cypriots in the south. A contested political entity virtually since Cyprus gained its independence from Britain in 1960, the island remains a contested region, with a United Nations–administered buffer zone separating the north from the south. In modern times as well, the British partitioning of Palestine to create the state of Israel in 1948 was only the beginning of an ongoing series of disputes involving Israel and its Arab neighbors—Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt at various times and currently the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Although Israel withdrew its troops and its settlers from these two disputed regions in 2005, a final agreement regarding these borderlands has to date not been achieved. In the same time frame (1947), India’s independence from British colonial rule did not ameliorate the long-standing internecine conflict between those of Hindu faith (Indian) and followers of Islam, and this led to the creation of the state of Pakistan—first as East Pakistan and West Pakistan and then the subsequent transforming of East Pakistan into the state of Bangladesh in 1971. The India-Pakistan dispute over the contested Kashmir region resulted in two major conflicts, the war of 1947/1948 and one in 1965, which
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failed to resolve the Kashmir borderland issue. Although tensions surrounding Kashmir borderlands have decreased since 2002, the region remains a contested borderland. India and China also have an unresolved borderland dispute over most of their joint militarized border. Kashmir is reputedly the site of the world’s largest and most militarized territorial dispute, involving India and Pakistan as well as China. While unrest in the former Yugoslavia is by no means new, borderland disputes continue to be a present reality for the states in the Balkan region as well. From the taking of control over Yugoslavia by Josip Tito in 1945, this communist nation-state remained under a single ruler until ethnic hostilities involving Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, and Albanians erupted in 1991. In 1992, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted independence. The republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the same year. Despite this apparent resolution of historic conflicts, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic stirred the political pot again by attempting in 1998 and 1999 to unite all ethnic Serbs in neighboring republics into a “Greater Serbia.” This attempt, culminating in the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and a subsequent ethnic-cleansing campaign, led to United Nations intervention in the form of a NATO-led military occupation force charged with the responsibility of keeping the peace. Although Kosovo consists of a numerical Albanian majority, there are numerous Serbian enclaves throughout Kosovo, necessitating the continuation of NATO occupation in the midst of civil attempts to institute democratic reforms and engineer a lasting peace accord between the ethnic combatants. The foregoing examples attest to the fragile nature of borderlands throughout the world, and it is apparent that historic rivalries based on ethnicity, culture, and territoriality are easily transformed into economic competition when natural resources and economic superiority are at stake. The “us versus them” phenomenon that is at the heart of the tribalism that characterizes borderland issues is obviously easy to engender, but difficult to dispel. Peter Doell See Appendix A See also Alamo, The; Balkans; Border Patrol; Colonias; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Ethnic Conflict; Globalization; Maquiladoras; Mexican Americans
Further Readings
Nauman, Talli. 2004. Border Clean Energy Advocates Grab for Power. Retrieved from http://americas.irc-online .org/amcit/507 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. N.d. The World Factbook. Available from https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/ factbook/print/pl.html
Web Sites
International Boundaries Research Unit: http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru Nijmegen Centre for Border Research: http://www.ru.nl/ncbr
BORDER PATROL The Border Patrol was founded in 1924 as part of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Immigration Bureau. Its primary mission is to secure national borders by the deterrence and apprehension of persons entering the United States without legal authorization. It is currently an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The Border Patrol’s origins and evolution are intertwined with the history of migration and ethnicity. Its policing function is a fundamental aspect to how a nation-state claims sovereignty. The Border Patrol’s function as territorial and social policing agent can be understood by tracing its history along with the history of migration legislation.
Early Contexts Early efforts at securing the border were informal and met with limited success. When the United States began restricting Chinese migration during the late 19th century, the corresponding need for policing migration arose. In 1904, the U.S. Immigration Service created a force of mounted inspectors to patrol the border with Mexico. Limited in number and training, these patrols had poor results. Unauthorized Chinese entrances from Mexico led Congress to create a horse-mounted border guard in 1915. It was based in El Paso, Texas, and patrolled the border to California with only 75 agents. The need for policing increased with the Immigration Act of 1917. It made migration more difficult by creating an $8 head tax and a literacy test. Those unable to meet the requirement simply entered
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U.S. border with Mexico. This photo shows the border in Nogales, Arizona, as it appeared on June 21, 2006. Border Patrol agents, now employed by the Department of Homeland Security, contend that the town is a hot spot in the struggle to secure the border. Besides the issue of illegal immigration and smuggling of illegal drugs, the post–September 11th security concerns present challenges to the Border Patrol, as there are a limited number of agents available to secure long stretches of the Canadian and Mexican borders. Source: U.S. Army photo by Jim Greenhill.
illegally. The 1924 immigration legislation added a visa requirement and increased the scope of deportable offenses. To have substance, these measures required an enforcement mechanism, which resulted in the formation of the Border Patrol in 1924. The initial Border Patrol had 450 agents, mostly recruited from Texas law enforcement. Recruits supplied their own horses, and the government provided a salary, a gun, a uniform, and a badge. It was not until the opening of the Border Patrol Academy in El Paso, Texas, in 1932, that agents received formal training. Espionage concerns during World War II stimulated an expansion of the Border Patrol to 1,531 agents. In addition to guarding the border, their work included staffing alien detention camps. In response to agricultural labor shortages during World War II, the United States and Mexico formed the “Bracero Program” in 1942. It established a quotabased, contract labor system for Mexicans to work in the United States. As many as 450,000 workers
migrated annually; an estimated 3 million Mexicans participated in the program before its conclusion in 1964. The Border Patrol policed the system, deporting those violating contracts. Unauthorized migration continued because labor demand exceeded quota and employers were willing to hire noncontract labor, which was cheaper. In response, the Eisenhower administration launched “Operation Wetback” in 1954. The Border Patrol utilized neighborhood sweeps and identification checks to round up suspects, resulting in 3 million deportations by the operation’s end. An important consequence of the Bracero Program was the formation of migrant networks, which linked communities from sending countries to those in the United States. These networks greatly facilitated the process of unauthorized migration. The 1965 Immigration Act capped Western Hemisphere visas at 120,000, which made legal migration impossible for millions of potential migrants, thus
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producing a constant flow of unauthorized migrants to the United States. The number of deportable migrants jumped from 110,000 in 1965 to 1,767,000 in 1986.
Legislation in the 1980s and 1990s The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provided for amnesty and stricter oversight of companies hiring unauthorized migrants. The Border Patrol’s focus shifted to interior enforcement, including checkpoints away from the border. The 1986 legislation failed to address the causes of migration in sending countries. A wave of Central American civil wars combined with a regionwide crisis in the agricultural sector to dramatically increase migration flows to the United States throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. To contain the flow, the Border Patrol returned to a border strategy of deterrence and apprehension. In September 1993, “Operation Hold the Line” stationed 450 agents along a twenty-mile segment of the border in El Paso. The aim was to deter migrants from crossing in urban areas and force them to cross in desert areas of New Mexico and Arizona. The plan was adopted in the San Diego and Tijuana sector with “Operation Gatekeeper,” in October 1994. These plans resulted in short segments of militarized, tightly sealed border, where fences, concrete canals, stadium lighting, motion sensors, video cameras, and line-ofsight positioning of Border Patrol agents became defining features of the urban border environment. The new strategies were expensive. Budgets nearly tripled between 1993 and 1999, from $1.5 billion to $4.2 billion. The Border Patrol’s “prevention through deterrence” strategy had significant consequences. It altered the nature of border communities, turning them into heavily monitored and policed urban sectors, restricting freedom of movement traditionally enjoyed by border residents, and fostering a confrontational relationship between the United States and Mexico. Shifts in migrant crossings to desert areas proved extremely dangerous; between 1993 and 1997, migrant deaths totaled 1,185. The shift substantively changed the nature of Border Patrol work as it increasingly focused on catching people in desert sectors and rescuing migrants dying of heat exhaustion. New routes and stricter policing caused human smuggling to be the dominant method for unauthorized border crossings. Charging upward of $2,000 a migrant, smuggling was big business run by organized crime. The smugglers have matched the Border Patrol’s
prevention and deterrence capacities with clever strategies of avoidance, including underground tunnels. Shortcomings to the legal and policing measures at containing migration fed into a strong wave of nativist sentiment during the 1990s. It labeled migrants as a drain on public resources, which led to ballot initiatives such as California’s Proposition 187, which voters passed in 1994 but which was overturned in federal court. In 1996, Congress attempted to address the issue again, with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It moved closer to criminalizing unauthorized immigration by enhancing deportable offenses and restricting social benefits to migrants. It also authorized adding 1,000 new Border Patrol agents per year between 1997 and 2001.
After September 11, 2001 The failure of Operation Hold the Line and Gatekeeper’s stricter border policing led the George W. Bush administration to consider implementing a guest worker program. Negotiations with the Mexican government, however, terminated because of the attacks on September 11, 2001, which shifted the entire border paradigm to the “war on terrorism.” It signified a major bureaucratic relocation for the Border Patrol and added the mission of stopping terrorists from entering the United States. In 2003, the Border Patrol was brought into the Department of Homeland Security, merging it with U.S. Customs, U.S. Immigration, and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, to form the Customs and Border Protection Agency. Post–September 11th security concerns present daunting challenges to the Border Patrol, the limited number of agents available for securing long stretches of remote Canadian and Mexican borders perhaps being the biggest. Concern for a possible terrorist entrance through Canada has led the Border Patrol to place more agents on the northern border, which drains its capacities to check the flow of unauthorized migrants in the south. The agency uses a spectrum of technology as “force multipliers,” allowing agents to “patrol” more miles with greater ability. Ground sensors, trip wires, and lasers are integrated with day and night vision cameras to better detect crossings. Unmanned aircraft complement the ground equipment and allow agents to patrol remote areas. The use of National Guard soldiers on the Mexican border also provides a “force multiplier.” A 700-mile fence along the Mexican and Texas border, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, is under construction.
Bosnian Americans
These border-policing measures are combined with more aggressive interior policing, with Border Patrol working with local, state, and federal agencies to deport unauthorized immigrants. Many question how effective these considerable measures are when confronting the immense task of policing an estimated 12 million undocumented people in the United States. The Border Patrol awaits its next phase of development as the nation once again debates the migration issue.
former Federation of Yugoslavia, beginning in 1993. The resettlement experience varied for Bosnian Americans, depending upon their personal characteristics and human capital and the receptivity of their host communities. This entry looks at their background and U.S. experience. Belarus Germany
Poland
Glen David Kuecker
Ukraine
Czech Republic
See also Borderlands; Bracero Program; Central Americans in the United States; Chinese Exclusion Act; Citizenship; Guest Workers; Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Proposition 187; “Wetbacks”
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Slovakia Moldova
Austria Hungary Slovenia
Romania
Croatia Bosnia & Herzegovina
Serbia
Ad
ria
tic
Italy
Se
Montenegro
Bulgaria
a
a
ani
Alb
Macedonia
Greece
Further Readings Ionian Sea
Dunn, Timothy. 1996. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: University of Texas, Center for Mexican American Studies. Durand, Jorge, Douglas Massey, and Nolan J. Malone. 2002. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Garcia, Juan Ramon. 1980. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Inda, Jonathan Xavier. 2006. Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Krauss, Erich. 2005. On the Line: Inside the U.S. Border Patrol. New York: Kensington. Maril, Robert. 2004. Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. Nevins, Joseph. 2002. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S. Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.
BOSNIAN AMERICANS According to the U.S. Department of State, approximately 107,000 Bosnian refugees had arrived in the United States by the year 2000. Bosnians fled their country of origin following the war that tore apart the
Turkey
Malta
Mediterranean Sea
Life in Bosnia Bosnia-Herzegovina, a nation of 3.8 million people according to 2007 estimates, is commonly known as Bosnia, and was one of six republics comprising the Federation of Yugoslavia. Bosnia reflected the multiethnic composition of the larger region and appeared to be both the most ethnically diverse and the most tolerant of the republics. More than 30% of all marriages in Bosnian cities in the 25-year period before the war may have been mixed marriages between Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Bosnian Serbs. This is an extremely high rate of intermarriage, indicating high social tolerance and cultural integration. The incidence of mixed marriages in rural areas was lower. Prior to the buildup of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnians experienced a way of life that was solid and good. Life is remembered nostalgically as “the beautiful life” or “the perfect life,” one filled with family, close friends, travel, and a more relaxed lifestyle than many have found in America. Many Bosnians in America today hailed from sophisticated
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urban environments, such as Sarajevo, in which they enjoyed a high standard of living, rich social networks, and close family ties. Subsistence farming contributed to the household economy in rural villages. Family and neighbors helped young couples build homes, and newly married couples lived with the husband’s family until they saved enough money to build. Families often owned land for a small farm, including orchards, gardens, and animals. Many rural households derived their income from both subsistence farming and wage labor. Subsistence farming transitioned to wage labor over the last 60 to 80 years, and the introduction of factory work for men led to the gradual feminization of agriculture.
Seeking Refuge The United States has resettled more than 2 million refugees since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. The largest wave of Bosnian refugees came to the United States in the few years immediately after the end of the war in 1995. Humanitarian policies set by the U.S. government allowed those with a need for protection and no other durable solution or those identified as of special concern to immigrate. For Bosnians, this included ethnically mixed marriages and those detained due to ethnicity, religion, or political opinion. Families were reunited when spouses, unmarried children of any age, and parents joined them, until the year 2000, when the family reunification program ended. Although many family members took advantage of these programs, others chose to stay in Bosnia or abroad, decided too late, or were caught in processing problems that were not satisfactorily resolved. Resettlement assistance for Bosnians and other refugees in America includes housing, food, and clothing, orientation to U.S. culture, health screenings, and referrals for social and educational services. These services are complemented by classes in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and employment training and placement. Refugees are expected to go to work within 6 months of arrival in the United States; legislative language lacks specificity but states that refugees should be self-sufficient as quickly as possible. A refugee may change his or her legal status to legal permanent resident after 1 year. After 5 years, refugees may apply for citizenship. In the last 2 decades, settlement has shifted away from traditional gateway cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Refugees find themselves in
medium and small metropolitan areas with growing foreign-born populations. Employment experiences vary with the economic conditions and hospitality of the host community. Some refugees found employment easily and worked their way up through lowwage entry jobs. Others were unemployed for long periods of time and experienced poverty and associated stressors. Refugees who held professional jobs in Bosnia frequently complain that their degrees or professional licenses are not recognized in America, and they experience downward mobility as a result. Reports of unemployment for Bosnian refugees in the United States are typical for Bosnians who immigrated to other countries. Positive adaptation outcomes are common but not universal for Bosnian Americans, who maintain close family ties wherever they are able. Many families lost everything they owned during the war and suffered the deaths of close family and friends. Adaptation includes significant stressors, such as language and employment problems; difficulties accessing various service systems, especially the health care system; postwar trauma; and, for the elderly, social isolation. Bosnians in an upstate New York city were quickly free of dependency on welfare programs, and many were able to purchase homes in a matter of a few years, even though some complained of downward occupational mobility and many were able to find only unskilled, low-wage employment. Positive outcomes emanate from characteristics of the Bosnians themselves—cultural and visual similarities to the host society and human capital interacting with features of the receiving society—opportunities for employment, affordable housing, and centralized and accessible service delivery systems. Sociocultural adaptation for Bosnian families in America may involve value conflicts between old ways and new. Prewar family patterns and structures may be radically altered from Tone Brina anthropological accounts of prewar Bosnia, where the significance of extended families and neighbors was emphasized. Bosnian Americans are making those adjustments and contributing to the rebuilding of new communities. Judith Owens-Manley See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Balkans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Intermarriage; Muslim Americans; Refugees
Boycott
Further Readings
Blau, Peter M., Carolyn Beeker, and Kevin M. Fitzpatrick. 1984. “Intersecting Social Affiliations and Intermarriage.” Social Forces 62:585–606. Bringa, Tone. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Coughlan, Reed and Judith Owens-Manley. 2005. Bosnian Refugees in America: New Communities, New Cultures. Sociological Practice Series. New York: Springer. Miller, Keneth, Jasmina Muzurovic, Gregory Worthington, Susie Tipping, and Allison Goldman. 2002. “Bosnian Refugees and the Stressors of Exile: A Narrative Study.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 72:341–354. Sekulic, Dusko, Garth Massey, and Randy Hodson. 1994. “Who Were the Yugoslavs? Failed Sources of a Common Identity in the Former Yugoslavia.” American Sociological Review 59:83–97. Singer, Audrey and Jill Wilson. 2006. From “There” to “Here”: Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.
BOYCOTT A boycott is a way to protest offensive acts employed by an individual or a group. Boycotts typically involve abstaining from the use of products or services of the offending entity until a particular policy or behavior desists. The term apparently originates from actions taken against Charles Cunningham Boycott, a negligent landowner, during the late-19thcentury Irish Land War. Boycotts continue to play an influential role in contemporary civil and political rights struggles worldwide. This entry describes characteristics of boycotts and briefly discusses boycotts undertaken during campaigns for equality. Boycotts can take a commercial or political form. Commercial boycotts are directed at businesses or organizations whose practices offend a certain group and will oftentimes call for participants to not purchase certain products or services. These types of boycotts are most successful when the target produces visible products or when their business will suffer as a result of being a target of a boycott. An example of a commercial boycott is the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts in the United States during the 1960s. Political boycotts are geared toward a nation or government and, like commercial boycotts, work to
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punish a political entity for unjust practices. The various boycotts of the Olympics were symbolic protests to unfavorable policies perpetrated by participating countries and are examples of political boycotts. Boycotts can also take the form of a threat or call to boycott. A threat of a boycott can be just as damaging as an actual boycott in destroying the image of an organization and thus coercively encouraging a change in policy. Boycotts end when organizers believe they have met their goals or when this means of protest is no longer viewed as productive for advancing their cause. Occasionally, boycotts continue unofficially despite organizers calling them off. As a protest strategy, boycotts face difficulty in clearly defining success. If a company decides to distance itself from an offensive behavior but doesn’t change its practices entirely, boycotters must consider whether they have successfully convinced the business of its wrongdoing. Although boycotters hope that their actions will bring about awareness, their ultimate aim is to change behaviors altogether. Because this outcome is not guaranteed, there is much debate as to whether the boycott is an effective means of resistance. Another obstacle faced by boycotts is changing consumer behavior. The use of media is essential in order to make the boycott campaign more visible and thus steer consumer behavior. Those targeted by boycotts are at great risk if they are unable to adequately respond to boycotters’ claims. Offending agents must be able to defend their actions or at least attempt to change behavior in order to salvage their reputation from these attacks. If organizations are facing false accusations, they also must have the means to defend themselves. In addition, boycotts have the potential to affect those who might not be directly involved, such as workers, who can suffer job or wage loss as a result of a boycott campaign. Within the United States, boycotts have been useful tactics in civil rights struggles. During the early 1800s, boycotts of slave-produced products were encouraged by those in opposition to slavery. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was spurred on by boycott strategies. In Montgomery, Alabama, Blacks boycotted the bus system in order to demand equal treatment of riders. Bus boycotts were also carried out in other southern cities as a form of protest to policies of segregation. The Montgomery bus boycotts in particular gave national recognition to Blacks such as Rosa Parks and brought the civil rights struggle in the United States to the forefront of public consciousness;
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the boycotts are also credited with giving the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement. Sit-ins, also practiced by Blacks during the civil rights era, took an obstructionist approach to boycotting. In protest of segregated lunch counters in the South, boycotters occupied seats at lunch counters and prevented others from being served. Both methods of boycotting were effective means to oppose racially discriminatory policies and ultimately change local and national policies. In the 1960s, grape and lettuce boycotts led by César Chávez of the United Farm Workers (UFW) allowed for central valley California farm workers to successfully organize against corporate growers. Because of the infeasibility of completely stopping production, the UFW employed boycotts against nonunion labor products as a means to stifle corporate producers. The pressure applied by product boycotts forced growers to concede to workers’ demands. Scholars suggest that the UFW was able to attain its goals because of a political environment that mobilized third-party support as well as a strategic use of the media that publicized workers’ grievances and ultimately gained sympathizers. The boycott of South African products during apartheid also served as a method to oppose a government’s policies. This boycott, which started in 1959 in Britain and eventually spread internationally, served as a direct attack on the government’s racist and oppressive policies. Boycotts of South African products applied external pressure on the South African government to desist from these policies. Boycotts as a protest strategy have successfully publicized injustices perpetrated by various groups within society. Although more research is needed to isolate the effectiveness of this strategy, it nonetheless remains a powerful tool of resistance. Nandi E. Dill See also Apartheid; Chávez, César; Civil Disobedience; Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Labor Unions; Parks, Rosa Further Readings
Branch, Taylor. 1989. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon & Schuster. Friedman, Monroe. 1999. Consumer Boycotts. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, J. Craig. 1985. The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press.
BRACERO PROGRAM Mexican workers have played an important role in the economic development of the United States. Since the late 19th century, Mexican workers have entered the United States and provided cheap labor for the construction of railroads and the development of agriculture. Their importance to agriculture is particularly distinctive in relation to the establishment of the Bracero Program, which is described in this entry. The Bracero Program, one of the most important contract labor systems, was established in 1942 by a binational agreement between the Mexican and the U.S. government and lasted until 1964. The historical context in which the Bracero Program was established was twofold. The Mexican revolution in 1910 did not improve Mexican farmers’ lives. Underemployment and unemployment were rising, and Mexican farmers were not able to survive on the land. This displaced population provided an important source of cheap labor. This constitutes the push factor for the migration of the Mexican population. The pull factor was World War II. There was a labor shortage in the United States because during the war, much of the population was concentrated in military services and military-related occupations. Acting on the appeal of farmers and agricultural businesses, the United States imported laborers to meet their demands. Bracero means “unskilled worker” or “hired hand” in Spanish, and most were from the Chihuahua region of Mexico. Between 1942 and 1964, 4.5 million workers entered the United States to work in the Bracero Program. However, the actual number of people may have been less since many workers entered the country several times. Since they were contract labor, there were stipulations in the contract concerning their working conditions. While they were required to return to Mexico, many chose to stay. Therefore, their presence changed the social, political, and demographic landscapes of the United States. The Bracero Program has been criticized for being exploitative. The human rights abuses have been well documented. In addition, many of the workers did not
Brain Drain
receive their promised deductions for their savings accounts, which were intended to facilitate their resettlement either elsewhere in the United States or, upon their return, in Mexico. Reflecting on this historical period, the current debate on immigration and the proposed guest workers program should take the Bracero Program’s experiences into consideration.
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The term brain drain refers to the immigration to the United States and other industrial countries of skilled workers, professionals, and technicians from developing nations. This continuing social phenomenon has two implications relating to race and ethnicity. First, the skilled workers are typically people of color who are desperately needed by their home countries. Second, some argue that the availability of these skilled overseas workers offers industrial nations the luxury not to encourage their own racial minorities and women to enter these desired fields of work.
skilled, educated Indians now seek to enter the United States, pulled by economic opportunity. The pay differential between the United States and other countries is so great that beginning in 2004, when foreign physicians were no longer favored with entry in the United States, physicians in the Philippines were retraining as nurses so that they could immigrate to the United States, where, employed as nurses, they would earn four times what they would as doctors in the Philippines. Countries undergoing significant political unrest, such as Iran and Iraq, may also be subject to the loss of human capital to other countries. Whether this remains a permanent or ongoing brain drain once the hostilities or unrest ends remains to be seen. The brain drain controversy was evident long before the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. However, the 1965 act seemed to encourage such immigration by placing the professions in one of the categories of preference. Various corporations, including Motorola and Intel, now find that one-third of their high-tech jobs are held by people born abroad, although many received their advanced education in the United States. Many foreign students say they plan to return home. Fortunately for the United States, many do not, but rather make their talents available in the United States. One study showed that the majority of foreign students receiving their doctorates in the sciences and engineering are still in the United States 4 years later. This leads to an ironic situation in which industrial countries mount efforts to assist the very countries that have lost a significant segment of their skilled workforces. Despite these realizations, few have seriously questioned policies that facilitate this drain. During the heated debates of the 21st century concerning immigration reform, few were willing to overhaul H-1B visas except perhaps to expand their numbers.
Impact on Developing Nations
Impact on Industrial Nations
In the mid-20th century, many scientists and other professionals from industrial nations, principally Germany and Great Britain, came to the United States. More recently, however, the brain drain has pulled emigrants from developing nations, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and several African nations. They are eligible for what are referred to as H-1B visas, qualifying them for permanent work permits. One out of four physicians in the United States is foreign-born; these immigrants play a critical role in serving areas with too few doctors. Thousands of
Critics note that the supply of professionally trained immigrants allows the United States to overlook its minority scholars. At present, for every two minority doctorates, there are five foreign citizens receiving this degree. In the physical sciences, for every doctorate issued to a minority citizen, eleven are received by foreign citizens. Some suggest that more attention should be paid to encouraging African Americans and Latinos to enter high-tech career paths. Some analysts view the current brain drain as yet another symptom of the unequal distribution of world
Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also Borderlands; Border Patrol; Discrimination; Immigration, U.S.; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Transnational People
Further Readings
Calavita, Kitty. 1992. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS. New York: Routledge Press. Driscol, Barbara A. 1999. Tracks North: The Railroad Bracero Program of World War II. Austin: University of Texas Press.
BRAIN DRAIN
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resources. In their view, it is ironic that the United States gives foreign aid to improve the technical resources of African and Asian countries while maintaining an immigration policy that encourages professionals in such nations to migrate to U.S. shores. These are the very countries that have unacceptable public health conditions and need native scientists, educators, technicians, and other professionals. In addition, by relying on foreign talent, the United States does not need to take the steps necessary to encourage native members of subordinate groups to enter these desirable fields of employment.
Nicaragua Costa Rica
Guyana Suriname French Guiana
Venezuela
Panama
Colombia Ecuador
Peru Brazil
Bolivia
Pacific Ocean
Paraguay
Chile
Richard T. Schaefer Argentina
Uruguay
See also Affirmative Action in Education; Biomedicine, African Americans and; Immigration, U.S.; Pipeline; Science Faculties, Women of Color on
Atlantic Ocean
Falkland Is
Further Readings
Hoffer, Thomas B. et al. 2001. Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 2000. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center. Mullen, Fitzhugh. 2005. “The Metrics of the Physician Brain Drain.” New England Journal of Medicine 353:1810–1818. Wessel, David. 2001. “Hidden Costs of Brain Drain.” Wall Street Journal, March 1, p. 1.
BRAZIL The diversity of Brazil’s population is reflected in 2000 census data. Whites made up a majority of the population (53.7%). African descendants made up 44.7% of the population, including 38.5% who defined themselves as mulattoes (mixed White and Black) and 6.2% who defined themselves as Black. The population of Japanese, Arabs, and Amerindians made up 0.9% of the total, and another 0.7% of the population was unspecified. This entry looks briefly at indigenous people in Brazil, a nation with an estimated 2007 population of 189.3 million, then focuses on the impact of African slaves and their descendants on the social fabric of Brazil.
Indigenous People There are over 200 indigenous groups in Brazil, with varied histories, languages, and cultures. They do
Tierra Del Fuego South Georgia & the South Sandwich Is
share in common that most of the indigenous in the Amazon are often regarded as obstacles to economic development, including logging, ranching, and mining. State policies have varied from supplying communities with consumer goods to relocation of groups to small preserves. Gold mining led to many deaths of the Yanomami tribal group in 1989 and 1990 as they came into contact with foreign diseases, oil, mercury, and other wastes. Numerous organizations began work on the behalf of the Yanomami, including the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the World Bank. In more recent decades, indigenous groups have fought for the creation and legal titling of reserves.
Slavery Following Pedro Alvares Cabral’s “discovery” of Brazil in 1500, the Portuguese began colonizing Brazil. For 3 centuries, Brazil’s economy was built on the transportation and labor of slaves in sugar plantations, coffee groves, and silver mines. In the early years, African slaves in Brazil survived less than a decade. For many years, there was a myth alleging that slavery in Brazil was “softer” or milder than
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Race in Brazil elsewhere. That myth has been debunked by many historians. Although Brazil ended the importation of Conceptiions and Labels slaves in 1850, it did not abolish slavery as an institution and free the slaves until 1888, the last country in Race in Brazil is complex and distinct from other Latin America to do so. countries, such as the Untied States. Most Brazilians Slaves in Brazil were predominantly from Africa’s today acknowledge or claim mixed African, European, Yoruba culture, but other languages were also and indigenous ancestries. Throughout Latin America, retained. Given their large population size and continracial conceptions and labels are more numerous and uous arrivals, African Brazilians retained their culture fluid than in the United States. One study of selfmore than slaves in the United States were able to do. labeling asked people, “What color are you?” and Slaves and their descendants hid images of their compiled a list of 134 different colors, including African spirits inside statues in Catholic churches. bluish, coffee, lily, pink, ebony, Russian, greenish, Many slaves escaped and formed independent almost white, and suntanned from the beach. colonies of runaway slaves called quilombos. In Although Brazilians are described as lacking Bahia, slave revolts were more common among slaves racial prejudice, there is a strong preference for of Muslim origin. The most famous was the Quilombo whiteness. In practice, the weight of racism causes dos Palmares, in which escaped slaves, mixed-race people to “whiten” themselves. For example, people, and indigenous warriors fought against the morenos (dark-skinned individuals) straighten their Portuguese and Dutch colonizers for 65 years. hair. People search for lighter-skinned marriage partSlavery was abolished in 1888, but rights to land of ners and use nicknames indicating a lighter skin tone. the descendants of slaves were not recognized until At times, the press has been criticized for distinguishthe 1988 constitution, which gave descendants of the ing Afro-Brazilians by skin tone in the news, as a quilombos the right to land titles for these tracts of divide-and-conquer strategy. Currently, as Brazilians land. Quickly, Worker Party members in congress, focus on cultural identity and national unity, more historians, attorneys, anthropologists, sociologists, individuals and organizations are using the term and others began discussing and working on land Afro-descendant. rights issues. Since 1988, there has been significant growth of defined quilombos. Established or new communities can apply for title deeds. The Institute of Land Reform and Settlement (INCRA), the Ministry of Culture, and a number of federal agencies are responsible for identification, legal recognition, and titling of these parcels of land. The process requires documentation of the history, geography, demography, genealogy, economy, political and social organization, religion, and culture of the communities. Historically, quilombos referred to places where runaway slaves hid. Some argue that any rural Black community should not be given the Brazilian men practicing capoeira on the beachfront. The capoeira is a trastatus. Some communities have chal- ditional Afro-Brazilian dance, and its contemporary practice indicates that lenged their forced eviction at the Inter- a vibrant and unique culture is alive and well among Blacks in Brazil. American Commission on Human Rights. Capoeira is a martial art that was initially developed by African slaves in Quilombo communities often engage in Brazil during the colonial period. It is characterized by skillful movements farming and fishing, but without educa- often played on the ground or completely inverted. Some versions also tional and health services, populations have a strong acrobatic component and are always played with music. Source: AFP/Getty Images. will be limited.
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Relationship p to Class
There are many socioeconomic differences between Whites, Blacks, and those with mixed ancestry. Whites are five times more likely to complete college than those of mixed ancestry and nine times more likely to do so than Blacks. The variations between the three major groupings are similar in the proportion in professions and income levels, as well as the likelihood of youth or adults being detained by police. Socioeconomic data have uniformly confirmed that race is correlated with levels of educational attainment, occupations, income, poverty rates, and housing quality. Blacks are approximately 45% of the population, but are 66% of those in poverty or extreme poverty. Blacks make up only 15% of the top decile of income groups, but 70% of the poorest decile. Even when Blacks have professional positions, they do not receive equal salaries. Blacks are twice as likely to be illiterate and to live in houses without running water, sanitation, and trash collection. Skin color affects life chances. The socioeconomic gap between Whites and people of color is larger than ranges within groups. Blacks exhibit higher instances of maternal mortality, tuberculosis, AIDS, leprosy, and uterine and prostrate cancer, as well as lower life expectancy.
second goal was to increase the proportion of Blacks in education, law, and medicine or in positions as mayors, diplomats, members of the armed forces, governors, and president. Rig ghtss and Cultu ura al Organizatio ons
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a strong “Black soul” movement in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Students adopted Afro hairstyles, clothing, music, and the “Black Power” slogans from the United States. Students and workers gathered in low-income suburbs at night, creating “Shaft Nights” and Black festivals. In the 1980s, people turned to Asia, Africa, and Latin America for inspiration and cultural symbols. Many young people began to identify with the cultural symbols of samba music and the umbanda religion as a form of cultural and political resistance, including university students, professionals, and even some members of the military. During much of the history of Brazilian popular culture, samba has been labeled as being only for poor Whites and Blacks, but in the 1970s, these cultural items were embraced by a broader range of people. Banco Itaú used symbols of the candomblé religion in its marketing campaign. Politiccall Openings
Black Rights Movement There has been a long history of activism for Black rights in Brazil. In May 1929, a group of Blacks met to discuss racial issues. The goals were to raise Blacks’ level of elementary training in history, language, civics, music, and other areas in order to help them advance in secondary and higher levels of education and in civic life. The group decided to create an organization to fight for dignity and react to racial prejudice and racism. Members protested the lack of Blacks in educational and religious institutions and the lack of Blacks as sales clerks. They called for the end of bans on Blacks in movie theaters, ice-skating rinks, and the Guardia Civil of São Paulo. They called for Blacks to reagir, or react against, racial prejudice and racism and fight for dignity. While members worked for the rights of Blacks, they sought not division, but understanding and dialogue with non-Blacks and new immigrants. At a second meeting, in 1931, the organization Frente Negra Brasileira (Brazilian Black Front) was founded. The first priority was to increase the proportion of Blacks completing secondary education. The
The Unified Movement Against Racial Discrimination (MNUCDR) was founded on June 18, 1978, following two highly publicized cases of discrimination and violence. These incidents of discrimination were not unique, but became a rallying cause. In one case, four Black athletes were denied entry and injured as they attempted to enter a discotheque in São Paulo. In the second case, a laborer, Robson Silveira da Luz, was killed. The first public activity was a protest against violence at the Teatro Municipal of São Paulo, with over 500 participants. Protests took place in other cities. In the 1980s, Black protests focused on problems of unemployment, underemployment, racial discrimination, police oppression, and the social marginality of Blacks, which still exists. The rallying cry was “Somos negros, somos netos de Zumbi,” translated as “We are Blacks, we are grandchildren of Zumbi,” honoring the leader of slave revolts who most symbolized resistance. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the MNUCDR in Belo Horizonte worked for Black rights and advancement, networking with candomblé and umbanda centers,
Brazil
workers’ organizations, samba schools, and slum neighborhoods. The central mission included denouncing racism, raising public consciousness of discrimination, raising the self-esteem of Black youth, and provoking debate over the current status of Blacks in Brazil. Other concerns included police violence against youth, the status of Black women, high unemployment levels, and stagnant wages. Devellopin ng an n Agenda
Brazil returned to democracy in 1985, after a period of military dictatorship. On May 13, 1988, Brazil commemorated the centennial of the abolition of slavery. On that occasion, President Jose Sarney announced the creation of the Palmares Cultural Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of social, cultural, and economic aspects of Black history. Three Black deputies began working on drafts of new antiracism measures, leading to the 1989 Lei Afonso Arinos, the constitutional clause against racism. The dramatic recent changes in ideology and policies regarding race in Brazil can be attributed to major national, regional, and global changes in thought, relationships, and policies. After the transition from military dictatorship to an elected civilian president, there were new opportunities for change. In 1988, Brazil adopted a new constitution, incorporating many new issues and some new rights into the legal document. The Movimento Negro, or “Black movement,” was responsible for the inclusion and definition of racism as a “crime” in the 1988 constitution. The first national meeting of Black organizations in Brazil took place in 1991. There was a very broad cross-section of participants, including the Black press, athletes, samba schools, musical, theater, and dance groups, writers, women, and union members. Out of the discussions, three problems facing the movement of Brazilian Blacks were defined as most important. According to their analysis, the Black movement suffered from a lack of visibility, low levels of participation and collaboration with other organizations, and a lack of movement independence or autonomy. Brazil’s “Black movement” surged due to the persistent inequities but also due to the examples of rights movements in the United States, Jamaica, Mozambique, and South Africa. Black Brazilian politicians met with the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus. Black organizations in Brazil tend to be very diverse and specialized in their arenas of interest and
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action. The focus may be on literacy, job training and education, music, or martial arts. Contemp pora ary y Issues
A number of issues are emerging in the 21st century, including reparations for slavery, loss of lands once worked by indigenous and Black peoples, affirmative action, antiracism, and the development of Black businesses. Other needs include infrastructural improvements and social and educational programs for children in slums. Another issue is tracking health issues by race, including HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell anemia, and other conditions. Concerning the labor market, there are demands for more professional and small-business participation, antidiscrimination actions, and investigations of child and slave labor. Prejudice and stereotypes still exist. Outside of carnival, soccer, music, or capoeira, “Black doesn’t sell.” The owner of Agencia Noir has staged “Blackouts” outside fashion shows to protest the lack of Black models. Content analyses reveal that Brazilian Blacks rarely appear in news magazines, and U.S. basketball players appear most frequently. Also, Blacks do not appear in magazine advertising because many firms believe that having a Black face associated with their credit card or yogurt would “burn the product.” A recent policy issue regarding race in Brazil is the development of affirmative action quotas for Black students in public universities. Historically, in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, public universities are heavily subsidized, and students must pay for books but not tuition. Students must pass rigorous exams for admission and spend months in private programs preparing for the exams. White students are more likely to graduate from private high schools, which are defined as superior. Black students without funds for such courses would have difficulty getting into universities. Brazilian data on educational attainment by race was widely disseminated in the press and on the Internet, and some foundations have focused on educational advancement, including the Steve Biko Foundation. Although there have been many external forces for change, the personal biographies of two presidents may have hastened the process. As a professor of sociology, Fernando Henrique Cardoso investigated racial and other forms of social stratification. Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva grew up in poverty and spoke openly about experiencing hunger as a child, which motivated him to institute breakfast programs and financial support for
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parents who keep their kids in school. This breakfast program has been replicated in other Latin nations. It is also instructive that both presidents have mentioned that they have um pe na chao, or a “foot on the floor,” which means some Black blood in their family history. Jan Fiola See Appendix A See also Afrocentricity; Argentina; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Brazilian Americans; Caribbean; Latin America, Indigenous People; Nikkeijin; One-Drop Rule; Race, Comparative Perspectives; Slavery
Further Readings
Bailey, Stanley. 2004. “Group Dominance and the Myth of Racial Democracy: Antiracism Attitudes in Brazil.” American Sociological Review 69:728–747. Bandeira Beito, Lucila. 2004. “Inequality and Human Rights of African Descendants in Brazil.” Journal of Black Studies 34:766–786. Garfield, Seth. 2001. Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil: State Policy, Frontier Expansion, and the Xavante Indians, 1937–1988. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hanchard, Michael. 1999. Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Linhares, Luiz Fernando do Rosario. 2004. “Kilombos of Brazil: Identity and Land Entitlement.” Journal of Black Studies 34:817–837. Lopes, Nei. 2004. “African Religions in Brazil, Negotiation, and Resistance: A Look from Within.” Journal of Black Studies 34:838–860. Paixao, Marcelo. 2004. “Waiting for the Sun: An Account of the (Precarious) Social Situation of the African Descendant Population in Contemporary Brazil.” Journal of Black Studies 34:743–765. Rabben, Linda. 2004. Brazil’s Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization: The Yanomami and the Kayapó. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Sanson, Livio. 2004. “Anti-racism in Brazil.” NACLA 38(2):26–31. Telles, Edward E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BRAZILIAN AMERICANS Immigrants from Brazil began arriving in the United States in large numbers in the mid-1980s as Brazil
began suffering a series of economic crises. The term Brazilian American is used here to include not only individuals of Brazilian parentage who were born and raised in the United States but also Brazilian immigrants who came to this country as children or adults. Their immigration and current situation are described in this entry.
Demographics The most problematic feature of the Brazilian American population in the United States is its size. It is impossible to accurately gauge how many Brazilian Americans live in any region of the United States or in the country as a whole. The problem can be illustrated with the following figures. In 2004, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that about 1.1 million Brazilians were living in the United States, while the 2003 American Community Survey counted only 237,000 Brazilians in the entire country. One reason for this discrepancy is that a significant but unknown number of Brazilian Americans are undocumented, making them less likely to participate in census counts. Brazilian Americans are not very representative of their homeland in terms of social class, in that far more of them belong to the middle and lower-middle classes than their compatriots in Brazil, where a majority of the population is either working class or poor. Nor are Brazilian Americans typical of their homeland in terms of race, since most cluster at the lighter end of the color spectrum. Blacks and other “people of color,” to use the Brazilian phrase, account for perhaps 20% of the Brazilian American community, a fraction of the nearly 45% reported in the 2000 census for Brazil as a whole. The racial makeup of Brazilian Americans is tied to their social class because Brazilian racial types are not randomly distributed across the nation’s social strata. People of color are overrepresented in the lower ranks of Brazilian society, underrepresented in the middle sectors, and nearly absent among the nation’s tiny elite. Thus, if Brazilian immigration is mostly a middle- and lower-middle-class phenomenon, it is not surprising that the Brazilian American population is lighterskinned than the Brazilian population as a whole.
Brazilian Differences To understand the place of Brazilian Americans in U.S. racial and ethnic hierarchies, one must be aware of the way Brazilians perceive race and ethnicity in
Brazilian Americans
their homeland. Brazilians have a strong national ideology that their land is a “racial democracy,” one without prejudice toward its darker-skinned citizens. The ideology, although untrue, nevertheless shapes the contours of interracial behavior and discourse in Brazil, smoothing its edges. While racial prejudice and discrimination do, indeed, exist in Brazil, their expression is more subtle than in the United States. Unlike the United States, there is no “one-drop rule” in Brazil, the custom that defines anyone with any known or suspected African ancestry as being Black. The Brazilian system of racial classification is far more complex. First, Brazil has never had two discrete racial categories, Black and White, and Brazilians recognize and have words to describe a wide variety of racial types. Moreover, how individuals are classified racially does not depend solely on their physical appearance—their skin color, hair type, and facial features or those of their relatives. Social class, education, and manner of dress all come into play in assigning someone to a racial category. As Brazilians put it, “Money Whitens”; that is, the higher the social class, the lighter the racial category to which an individual belongs. As a result of their past experience, Brazilians coming to the United States are often confounded by this nation’s system of racial classification. AfroBrazilians who were accustomed to being called by terms like mulato (mulatto) and moreno escuro (dark brunette) back home are nonplussed by the American category “non-White.” But this uneasiness is not limited to people of color, because in the United States, most Brazilians, including fair-skinned Brazilians, are classified as Hispanic, Latino, or “Other”—all “nonWhite” categories, according to U.S. standards. Brazilian Americans also have difficulty with ethnic labels in the United States, particularly when they are misclassified as Hispanics. Indeed, one of the first things a Brazilian learns to say after arriving in the United States is “I do not speak Spanish.” Referring to Brazilian Americans as Hispanics is incorrect because the term refers to Spanish speakers or those of Spanish-speaking descent, while the native language of Brazil is Portuguese. However, even many educated Americans think that Spanish is the language of Brazil, and they may be unaware that Portuguese is spoken outside Portugal. Both in Brazil and in the United States, Brazilians insist on distinguishing themselves linguistically and ethnically from other Latin Americans, a stance rooted
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in a sense of cultural pride in the distinctiveness of their “race,” as they call it. Brazilians’ sense of themselves as a unique racial group helps explain why it is so difficult for Brazilian Americans to accept their inclusion in other groups. Brazilian Americans often note with frustration and occasional anger the ambiguity surrounding their ethnic identity. This is why they often go out of their way to use the symbols of language and culture to separate themselves from others whom they deem lower on the social ladder. In particular, they seek to distinguish themselves from Hispanics. Considerations of ethnic discrimination may also be involved when Brazilian Americans insist on stressing their distinctiveness from the Hispanic population in the United States. Many Brazilian Americans claim that they encounter discrimination because Americans think they are Hispanics, that they are the victims of negative Hispanic stereotypes, and that they receive better treatment when they make it clear that they are not Hispanic. Class elitism may play a role here as well. Since the majority of Brazilian Americans are middle and lower-middle class and many are well educated, they resent being confused with the rest of the country’s Latin Americans, most of whom they view as poorer and less educated than themselves. Hence, many Brazilian Americans are adopting stereotypes that already exist in U.S. society and using them to distance themselves from Hispanics. As a consequence, Brazilian Americans have played two contradictory roles: the role of the exploited minority and the role of transmitter of the dominant culture’s ideology. Maxine L. Margolis See Appendix A See also Brazil; Hispanic Versus Latino; Immigration, U.S.; Multiracial Identity; Race, Social Construction of; South Americans in the United States
Further Readings
Beserra, Bernadete. 2003. Brazilian Immigrants in the United States: Cultural Imperialism and Social Class. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. Margolis, Maxine L. 1994. Little Brazil: An Ethnography of Brazilian Immigrants in New York City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Margolis, Maxine L. 2004. “Brazilians in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Paraguay.” Pp. 602–615 in Encyclopedia of Diasporas, edited by M. Ember, C. R. Ember, and I. Skoggard. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
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Britain’s Irish
BRITAIN’S IRISH The experience of Irish migrants to Great Britain and their descendants—Britain’s Irish—stands in marked contrast to that of Irish Americans. The latter have emerged as one of the largest ethnic ancestry groups in the United States. In the United States, the number of people who define their ethnic backgrounds, at least to some extent, as Irish is ten times the number of actual Irish immigrants. The Irish American ethnic community has expanded enormously from its immigrant base. In Britain, it is a very different story, as shown by the fact that there is no equivalent for the term Irish American. The British-born descendants of Irish immigrants are rarely, if ever, described as Irish British, despite the fact that Irish migration to Great Britain has been substantial for 2 centuries. Indeed, an estimated 13 million of Great Britain’s 58 million people can trace at least some of their ancestry back to Ireland. Also, the 2001 census of Great Britain recorded 750,000 Irish-born, far exceeding any other overseas-born category. Yet in the same census, only 690,000 people identified their ethnic backgrounds as Irish. While census figures need to be treated with caution, a major issue in the study of Irish ethnicity and migration is examining why there is no multigenerational Irish British community, given the scale of Irish migration to Great Britain. Why, for many millions of Britons of Irish ancestry, is this not an aspect of their contemporary social identities?
Irish Migration to Great Britain Figure 1 is a simplified representation of the number of Irish-born recorded in Great Britain from 1841, the first time a place-of-birth question was included in British censuses, up until 2001. Two trends are immediately obvious: • The twin peaks of Irish migration to Great Britain are those who arrived after the Famine and those who arrived after World War II. • Irish migration to Scotland declined through the 20th century, and England became increasingly important as the primary site of settlement.
In addition to these broad statistics, during the 19th century in particular, large numbers of Irish migrated annually for seasonal work. As many as 100,000 people
may have been involved in this seasonal tradition; work gangs of Irish, made up of men, women, and children, were a familiar sight across Great Britain. Working parties, often organized along extended-family lines, would spend up to 6 months working on farms, employed primarily in the labor-intensive agricultural work. These migrant workers, known as “Spalpeens” and “Tatie Hookers,” were an important part of western Ireland’s economy. Their seasonal earnings sustained communities in Ireland’s northwest areas up until the 1970s. This is a key feature distinguishing Britain’s Irish from the Irish in North America, the Antipodes, Africa, and elsewhere in the world; for many, migration was temporary. Moreover, this large and mobile community was not recorded in the census. More fundamentally, censuses in Great Britain prior to 2001 recorded only the Irish-born, not the descendants of Irish immigrants. Nonetheless, the graph’s twin peaks provide an easily grasped impression of the numerical and temporal scale of migration from the island of Ireland to Great Britain.
Ethnic Incorporation As Linda Colley has shown in her account of the development of British national consciousness in the 18th and 19th centuries, a shared enmity for Catholicism helped gel the English, Welsh, and Scottish together into a single British people. Overt anti-Catholicism characterized British nation building of the 18th century, symbolized by the 1701 Act of Settlement, which expressly forbids a Catholic or someone married to a Catholic from ascending to the throne. As the 18th century turned into the 19th century, attitudes toward Catholics became less antagonistic. Nonetheless, the arrival in Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century of hundreds of thousands of impoverished Irish Catholics accelerated the debate around how a Protestant state ought to deal with the Catholic Irish. Irish nationalism has always threatened and continues to threaten the integrity of the United Kingdom; Catholicism does not. The British government’s establishment of a system of state-aided Catholic schools became the means by which the children of Irish immigrants, a potentially politically dangerous ethnic minority, could be turned into lawabiding, loyal British subjects. The Catholic clergy, with rare exceptions, did not take on the role of sustaining Irish ethnic consciousness. They were concerned with keeping people in the
Britain’s Irish
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1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 England and Wales
Figure 1
Scotland
Irish-Born Recorded in Great Britain: 1840–2001
Sources: Adapted from Jackson, 1963; Office of National Statistics, 2002; General Registrar’s Office (Scotland), 2002.
faith, while at the same time assisting their integration into British society. The strategy proved remarkably successful. The key, sustained, and most visible impact of Irish immigration is the 5-million-strong British Catholic Church. The Irish were not the only Catholic migrants to Great Britain; southern Europeans, Maltese, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese have all added to the ethnic mix, but the Irish were by far the largest component. The overtly Protestant British state, in a masterstroke of ethnic management, allowed middle-class British Catholics to prove their loyalty by handing over to them the task of educating and integrating the children of immigrant Irish Catholics.
The Impact of New Immigration The secularization of British society from the 1950s onward coincided with the arrival of significant numbers of non-White immigrants in the south and midlands of Great Britain. Both these factors refocused indigenous antipathy to immigrants and away from the Catholic Irish. Nonetheless, in the few areas of Great Britain where the Protestant religion is still central to the identity of the “indigenous” population, ethnic Irish communities made up of the descendants of Catholic immigrants remain highly visible. This is particularly the case in West Central Scotland, where even after four generations of settlement, the Catholic
descendants of Irish immigrants flag their Irishness in a way that is quite overt and quite unlike in any other part of Great Britain. Since the 1960s, Irish migrants have not been subject to the immigration legislation that the British government introduced beginning with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act. Within 11 years, successive British governments had effectively closed the door to the immigration of non-White subjects of the British Commonwealth. Irish migrants from the Republic of Ireland were exempt. This concession was not necessarily based on any sense of inter-White ethnic solidarity. It was a pragmatic response to the geopolitical realities; part of the United Kingdom was on the island of Ireland, and independent Ireland was an integral part of Britain’s sphere of interest. The difficulties in policing the boundary between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were clear to all involved. Moreover, the Irish government of the day skillfully played on these difficulties to secure continued access for Irish workers to the British labor market. In any event, by 1973, both the United Kingdom and Ireland were members of the European Economic Community, and movement between member states was permissible anyway. Thus, Irish migrants (with the exception of restrictions during World War II) have had and continue to have unlimited access to Britain and all the rights and entitlements of British natives.
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Irish Identity in Contemporary Britain The last 10 years have witnessed a transformation in relationships between Ireland and Britain. Key to this has been the signing of the peace agreement between the British and Irish governments on Good Friday 1998, aimed at resolving the conflict over the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, the northeastern six counties of the island of Ireland, which remain part of the United Kingdom. Over the same time scale, Ireland’s reputation as an international economic success story has helped to redefine, in a dramatic and positive way, what it means to be Irish. The so-called Celtic Tiger has drawn to Ireland thousands of immigrants from Great Britain, mostly Irish-born and their British-born children, but also British people with no obvious connection to Ireland. This reversal of the immigrant flow between Britain and Ireland is unique in modern times. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has written of how proud he is of his Irish roots. This is also unprecedented. Irish cultural and sporting products and personalities have become immensely popular in Britain. The hibernophile tone of contemporary Britain has dramatically changed the profile of Irishness. Yet there appears to be little evidence of an emerging Irish–British community. Nonetheless, the future is open. Given the transformed context of Irish–British relations, the seemingly assimilated British-born descendants of Irish immigrants may yet discover and embrace their roots in Ireland as a key and important aspect of their contemporary social identity. Kevin G. Howard See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Identity Politics; Ireland; Irish Americans; United Kingdom
Further Readings
Bradley, Joseph. 2005. Celtic Minded: Essays on Religion, Politics, Society, Identity, and Football. Argyll, UK: Argyll. Colley, Linda. 1996. Briton’s Forging the Nation 1707–1837. London: Vintage Press. Government of Ireland, Taskforce on Emigration. 2002. Ireland and the Irish Abroad. Dublin, Ireland: Department of Foreign Affairs. Hickman, Mary J. 1995. Religion, Class, and Identity. Aldershot, UK: Avebury Press. Howard, Kevin. 2006. “Constructing the Irish of Britain: Ethnic Recognition and the 2001 U.K. Censuses.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29:104–123.
Sewell, Denis. 2002. Catholics: Britain’s Largest Minority. London: Penguin.
BROWN BERETS The Brown Berets emerged in the late 1960s as an organization that reflected the politicization of Chicano youth and their frustration with reformist politics. The Brown Berets incorporated a militant practice of community empowerment as Chicanos, members of a racial and ethnic minority. Their history and impact are described in this entry.
Group Origins The origins of the organization exemplify the progressive politicization of youth in the era of the 1960s as they began to see a need for more direct action approaches to challenge institutional racism. Initially, a group of young Mexican Americans who were emerging leaders in their communities called themselves “Young Citizens for Community Action” (YCCA). As these young people addressed the issue of school reform and political representation of the Mexican American community, they renamed themselves “Young Chicanos for Community Action,” signifying a shift toward selfidentification and self-assertion rather than the assimilationist paradigm of the “young citizen.” At the same time, increasing experiences of police brutality in the East Los Angeles community and the harassment of young people who frequented the La Piranya Coffeehouse called for more direct action approaches. The Brown Beret organization originated in East Los Angeles, where the chapter was central to key events in the Los Angeles activities of the Chicano Movement. Among these events, the East Los Angeles chapter participated in the East Los Angeles high school student walkouts of 1968, when thousands of Mexican American youth protested the lack of a quality education. The Brown Berets were also instrumental in the development of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC), as they joined Rosalio Muñoz, a leader in the antiwar effort, to organize the largest minority-based antiwar march in the United States, held on August 29, 1970. Many of these activities were reported in the organization’s newspaper, La Causa, which centrally featured local events and involvements but also discussed chapter activities
Brown Berets
across the United States. Finally, this chapter founded the East Los Angeles Free Clinic, a successful effort to provide medical services to the local community. While the East Los Angeles chapter was a major actor in the Chicano movement, it was not long after its founding that many young men and women donned the Brown Beret, referencing the Black Panther Party and the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and proclaimed their role as protectors of the community throughout the Southwest and in some parts of the Midwest, such as Minnesota and Wisconsin. Most chapters of the Brown Berets identified with the slogan “La Causa” and were part of the National Brown Beret organization. There were some variations of the slogan during this time, reflecting local political cultures as well as larger ideological positions and differences. In Texas, some chapters of the organization developed in close affiliation with the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) to emphasize the need for brotherhood. In California, chapters of the organization adopted the slogan “Aztlán,” in recognition of their more internationalist concerns. In general, the organization often represented its natural constituency as male youth and members of local gangs but counted among its members Vietnam veterans, college students, high school students, and women. Although the Brown Berets were a key organization central to the history of Chicano militancy in the 1960s and 1970s, it is important to note that a variety of youth militant groups developed during this time. In California, Colorado, and New Mexico, a group organized as the Black Berets espoused a grassroots community orientation rooted less in a specific cultural nationalism and more in economic concerns. Members of Los Comancheros, founded in Northern New Mexico, identified themselves with the struggles of land grant heirs who were seeking to reclaim their land and to maintain the link between cultural identity and land. Finally, La Junta, which included former members of the East Los Angeles Brown Berets, emphasized the importance of culture as a tool of revolutionary change.
Women in the Berets While the ideal recruit to the Brown Berets appeared to be the vato loco, or former gang member, women participated in various chapters of the organization. As Brown Berets, women engaged in a variety of activities, from the “traditional” gender roles to which many women during this time were relegated, such as
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preparing food or taking notes at meetings, to less traditional activities such as marching, organizing, and public speaking. Some chapters adopted the Mexican revolutionary figure of the Adelita, or “woman soldier,” as a means of understanding where women fit into the organization. The East Los Angeles chapter is noteworthy for having attracted a core of women participants who became central to the organization’s day-to-day activities by staffing the Brown Berets office and eventually staffing the East Los Angeles Free Clinic. A number of women in this cohort who were involved early in the organization’s development also became members of the NCMC. Due to the lack of appreciation for their work and contributions on the part of the chapter leadership, these women left the organization in February 1970. In 1972, the Brown Beret organization was declared disbanded by the prime minister of the national Brown Berets, David Sanchez, one of the founders of the East Los Angeles chapter. His declaration was made after the final series of events in which a significant number of Berets participated: The Caravana and Marcha de la Reconquista. After traveling throughout the Southwest and Midwest, the group, composed primarily of California-based Berets, staged their final major action, the takeover of Catalina Island, to bring attention to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.Mexico war and agreed to the annexation of Mexico’s northern territories. Although Sanchez declared the end of the organization, chapters of the Brown Berets continued to develop and evolve through the 1980s. In Austin, Texas, an active group of Brown Berets pursued their vision of social justice. They focused their attention on the segregation of space in the city of Austin and on environmental issues raised by the city’s sponsorship of boat races that produced exhaust and pollution near the city’s working-class and poor neighborhoods. In the 1990s and 2000s, new generations of young people have continued to respond to the need for direct action and community involvement and have formed new “autonomous” chapters in locations such as Watsonville, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah, to organize around community issues such as immigrant rights and the environment. Dionne Espinoza See also Aztlán; Black Panther Party; Chicano Movement; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); Young Lords
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Further Readings
Chavez, Ernesto. 2003. ¡Mi Raza Primero! [My People First!] Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978. Berkeley: University of California Press. Espinoza, Dionne. 2001. “‘Revolutionary Sisters’: Women’s Solidarity and Collective Identification among Chicana Brown Berets in East Los Angeles, 1967–1970.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 21:1–38. Marin, Marguerite. 1991. Social Protest in an Urban Barrio, 1966–1974. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
BROWN V. BOARD
OF
EDUCATION
Arguably one of the most significant cases in the 20th century, Oliver L. Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) marked a judicial turning point in America. Although Brown v. Board of Education was not the first to challenge the notion of “separate but equal” in education, it became a landmark case. The decision stretched beyond education and served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, Brown became the platform on which civil and human rights initiations would burgeon. The impact on U.S. society in general and the education of Blacks in particular has been momentous and undeniable.
own Before Bro To understand the significance of the Brown case, it is imperative to examine from a historical perspective African Americans’ status in society, as well as in education. Throughout history, significant historical and legal events have served as markers for addressing racial inequality and discrimination. Contention surrounding Black education in the United States can be connected to various forms of discrimination that began in 1619 and have continued to the present day. While the Emancipation Proclamation issued in 1863 freed the slaves, the practical effect was virtually nonexistent in southern states. Even with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship to African Americans and guaranteed equal protection under the law, covert and overt forms of discrimination and inequality persisted. Throughout the 1860s in the South, the law forbade the
education of slaves, while many northern communities refused to allow Blacks to attend public schools. The struggle for Black education has been lengthy and formidable. Three significant legal cases were argued before Brown that reinforced inequality and segregation in the United States. In 1849, in the case of Roberts v. the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregated schools were permissible under the state’s constitution, under the justification that segregated schools benefited both races. This case would later serve the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the “separate but equal” doctrine. Less than a decade later, in 1857, came the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Although Scott had been a resident of Illinois for 4 years, his status in the South remained that of property. The ruling that stated African Americans were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the White man was bound to respect” reaffirmed the disposition of both northerners and southerners. Prior to Brown v. Board of Education, the legal justification for racial segregation was maintained by the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The arrest of Homer Plessy in 1892 led to two appeals, reaching the Supreme Court in 1896. The plaintiff argued that provision of separate facilities on a railroad car was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, because it denied Plessy his equal-protection rights, and the Thirteenth Amendment, because it perpetuated essential features of slavery. In its ruling, the Court adjudicated the Louisiana state law that mandated separate but equal accommodations for Blacks and Whites on intrastate railroads. Eight of the nine justices contended that neither amendment was applicable to Plessy’s case. The Thirteenth Amendment, the justices argued, protected political equality, not social equality. The ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson provided legal justification for Jim Crow laws while fortifying notions of White supremacy and Black inferiority.
The Case Although Oliver Brown was the case’s namesake, Brown v. Board of Education was actually a class action lawsuit that combined five cases and over 200 plaintiffs, all sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), with Thurgood Marshall as the chief counsel. Using Brown’s name was a legal strategy to have a man represent all of the plaintiffs. In 1952, the argument was
Brow wn v. Board of Educa atio on
heard in court; reargument occurred in 1953; and a decision was reached in 1954 by the Supreme Court. The Court ruled unanimously in favor of Brown, overturning numerous precedents set by the Supreme Court. When coming to their conclusion, the Warren Court resolved that segregation of children in public schools, even if the facilities or other “tangible” factors were equal, was unconstitutional. Reargument for Brown centered largely on deciphering the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the plaintiffs argued it was unconstitutional to impose educational distinctions based on race. The clause states, “No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” Accordingly, the decision held that racially segregated schools deny a group the benefits of public education based solely on race. Using psychological studies to support their claim, the plaintiffs argued that educational segregation extends beyond the classroom, leading to detrimental effects on Black children and other forms of inequality. The plaintiffs showed the link between housing and schooling, noting that school segregation has reinforced housing segregation. Even more important to their argument was proving the ambiguity of the Fourteenth Amendment and understanding the context in which it was drafted. When it was written, widespread public education had not yet taken hold and schools were usually private institutions. Those who passed the Fourteenth Amendment most likely did not consider the consequences or implications, especially since most Black children were not attending school at the time. The defense’s argument was dubious and limited. The Board of Education of Topeka maintained that the facilities for Black children were equal to those for White children. They also emphasized that although people should be treated equally, it did not imply they should be treated the same. Unlike in preceding cases, the Supreme Court took into consideration educational segregation’s effects, rather than only the definition of rights, and ordered schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” However, it is important to understand that the Brown ruling did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants, nor did it support the end of de facto segregation. At the time Brown came into the Court’s jurisdiction, it was glaringly obvious that “separate” was never “equal.” The Supreme Court had to acknowledge the basic right to an equal education for all citizens or abandon the goal of equality.
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National coverage of the unanimous Brown decision on May 17, 1954, provided a glimpse into the country’s differing perspectives on school integration. Many newspapers in the South showed opposition, while northern cities were more celebratory in their reactions. Between 1955 and 1960, more than 200 school desegregation hearings were held by federal judges. Riots, massive resistance, and the creation of “splinter districts” (building new, all-White schools) produced a tumultuous journey to school desegregation and equality. In 1963, the Alabama National Guard intervened so that two African American students could attend the University of Alabama despite Governor George Wallace’s attempt to physically block the doors. Desegregation was met with such hostility that some districts attempted to close schools rather than integrate. A decade after Brown, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act was adopted in 1964, which authorized the federal government to file school desegregation cases. Title VI of the act prohibited discrimination in programs, including schools, which receive federal financial assistance. Although the Brown decision was met with much disobedience, it was not until 1968 that the Supreme Court took action and ordered states to dismantle segregated schools “root and branch.” The Court identified five factors—facilities, staff, faculty, extracurricular activities, and transportation—to be used to measure a school system’s compliance with the Brown mandate in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County.
Resegregation? Since Brown, numerous Supreme Court decisions have all but overturned the desegregation policy. By 1973, the Supreme Court had ruled that education was not a “fundamental right” and that the Constitution does not require equal education expenditures within a given state. The consequence of this ruling consigns minority and poor students who live in low-income areas to substandard schools. One year later, the Court blocked a plan to desegregate urban schools with high minority populations. For urban school districts with high minority populations, the impact of Brown today appears almost insignificant. In 1986, a federal court allowed all school districts that met the Green requirements to be released from the desegregation plan and returned to local control; by 1995, the Supreme Court had revised its desegregation plan by returning schools to local control.
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In recent years, there has been much research about the resegregation of public schools across the nation, particularly in urban centers. Public schools today are more segregated than they were prior to court-ordered busing and other desegregation techniques established decades ago. As school desegregation is being abandoned, many fault the Supreme Court’s more recent decisions that ended desegregation orders. Whether de jure or de facto, segregated schools are inherently unequal. While the overwhelming majority of citizens favor desegregation, the diligence in maintaining integrated schools has fallen by the wayside. Originally a necessary step to ensure constitutional rights for African Americans, the reasons to support integrated schools are more varied—yet still imperative—today. The connection between school segregation and economic class is undeniable. Research has shown nearly 90% of severely segregated schools for Blacks and Latinos are the same schools in which at least half of the student body is economically disadvantaged. Moreover, the benefits of attending a racially diverse school are enormous: enhanced learning, additional civic engagement, higher academic achievement for minority students, and increased positive social interaction among all students. Discounting the importance of an integrated education ignores the struggle for equality fought in Brown, as well as the influence it has on all other branches of society.
Legacy of Brown The decision reached in Brown v. Board of Education was pivotal in the struggle for racial desegregation and equality in the United States. As well, although the Brown case referred to educational equality, the ruling signified much more. Brown v. Board of Education was a case that confronted discrimination and stereotyping based on one’s race, ethnicity, religion, and cultural characteristics. Brown also paved the way for Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination in schools against students with physical or mental handicaps. The decision to end this discriminatory behavior has had implications far beyond the classroom. Across the country, the Brown decision protected the natural rights of citizens and placed the sovereign power in the hands of the people. While Brown was undoubtedly a turning point in U.S. history, it was the impetus, not the end, in the battle for equality; educators, public
officials, and citizens must continue to pursue equality and carry Brown into the 21st century. AnneMarie Cesario See also African Americans; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; Educational Stratification; Minority Rights; One-Drop Rule; Plessy v. Ferguson; Racism; Resegregation; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Title IX
Further Readings
Boger, John Charles and Gary Orfield, eds. 2006. School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Clotfelter, Charles T. 2006. After “Brown”: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kozol, Jonathan. 2005. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Crown. Martin, Waldo, ed. 1998. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ogletree, Charles J. 2004. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: Norton. Raffel, Jeffrey A. 1998. Historical Dictionary of School Segregation and Desegregation: The American Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
BULGARIAN AMERICANS Bulgarian Americans are immigrants from Bulgaria, a country of 7.7 million in 2007, as well as their descendants. According to the 2000 census, a total of 35,090 people born in Bulgaria were resident in the United States, of whom 27.6% were citizens. Two groups make up the Bulgarian American population: those who came from Macedonia (currently southern Yugoslavia and northern Greece) and those who came from Bulgaria proper. The main difference between the two groups is that Macedonian immigrants also identify with their geographic region, as well their Bulgarian descent. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Bulgaria to the United States and the contemporary picture of Bulgarian Americans.
Burakumin n
Latvia
Baltic Sea
Russia
Lithuania
Belarus
Poland
Ukraine
Czech Republic
Slovakia Austria Mold ova
Hungary Romania
Croatia Bosnia & Herzegovina
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Se a
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 82,828 people of Bulgarian national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Illinois, New York, Florida, and Georgia. Of the Bulgarian-born immigrants present here in 2000, only 1.5% had entered the country prior to 2000. According to the 2000 census, 40.7% spoke English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $46,668, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Among famous Bulgarian Americans are Carl Djerassi, chemist and developer of the first oral contraceptive pill; Christo, artist/creator of environmental art, such as “The Gates” in Central Park, New York; John Atanoff, inventor of the first computer; and Stephane Groueff, writer/journalist, who wrote Manhattan Project. Jennifer M. Klein
Mediterranean Sea Cyprus
Immigration Patterns The first wave of Bulgarian immigration occurred between 1900 and 1910, bringing an estimated 50,000 to the United States. These early immigrants came to the United States because of economic hardship and overpopulation in their homeland. The majority of these immigrants were single men, peasants and unskilled laborers, who came with the intention of earning some money and then returning home. Many succeeded with their goal, for between 1910 and 1929, there were more returnees than new immigrants. Between 1919 and 1939, women and children made up the majority of the second wave of immigrants to the United States, joining the men who had decided to stay. The last period of immigration began after World War II, continuing to the present. The most recent immigrants have come to the United States as political refugees.
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Baker, Randall. 1994. Summer in the Balkans: Laughter and Tears after Communism. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Pundeff, Marin. 1994. Bulgaria in American Perspective: Political and Cultural Issues. New York: Columbia University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Bulgaria. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/ foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Vazov, Ivan. 1971. Under the Yoke. New York: Twayne.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Bulgaria have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become U.S. citizens. From 1997 through 2002, about 4,200 Bulgarians immigrated to the United States annually. At least 15,000 Bulgarian Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997.
BURAKUMIN The largest minority group in Japan, with numbers ranging from 1.5 to 3 million, the Burakumin (“the people of the hamlet”) are often known in Western
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scholarship as an “invisible minority.” This so-called invisibility comes from an American and European understanding of definitions of many minority groups. From this perspective, defining characteristics between minority and majority groups include racial and ethnic differences, yet the Burakumin in Japan fit neither of these categories. The Burakumin are Japanese, physically, ethnically, and culturally, and they follow the same varied religious beliefs as majority Japanese. In short, there is nothing that clearly marks the Burakumin as minorities, other than a continuing social stigma in membership. Discrimination against the Burakumin was based on occupational marginalization prior to emancipation in the late 19th century, when the categorization shifted to residency. The majority of the districts where the Burakumin live tend to be in western Japan. Great strides have been made in changing the living and social conditions of the Burakumin through national laws first implemented in 1969. Owing to how the Burakumin are counted, their numbers are not as easily substantiated as those of other minorities in Japanese society, such as resident Koreans. For the government, the statistics on the Burakumin, including the number of Burakumin, are based on residence in an area recognized as a Buraku district, and once someone moves from that area, he or she is no longer counted. For the Buraku Liberation League, the largest Buraku social movement organization, membership is based on ancestry, not area of residence; thus, migration will not change the numbers.
Historical Background The group now defined as Burakumin has, as its historical lineage, a number of social categories, including living in particular locations and performing ritualistically “impure” but necessary work, such as dealing with animals, working with leather, or caring for the dead. Other categories included those who were traveling entertainers and yet others who were used as bounty hunters. Historically, discrimination against Burakumin was based on religious, social, and political rationales, through a system of continued discrimination defining those who perform this work as “impure,” based on Shinto and Buddhist tenets on death and blood. This discrimination also served a political purpose. The military government was able to maintain a society that was rigidly controlled and heavily taxed, while using an outcast group to act as a scapegoat for social ills. The single greatest form of social control
was the control of particular industries, limiting the work Burakumin could perform and establishing that work as hereditary positions. For example, though not all Burakumin were in the leather or butchering industries, these were areas in which the Burakumin were overwhelmingly involved, and these positions were, by law, hereditary. However, an occupation that was considered a Burakumin occupation in one area was not necessarily the same throughout the country.
Emancipation With the Emancipation Edict of 1871, legal controls on employment for the Burakumin ended. The Emancipation Edict, however, did not eliminate discrimination. Government proclamations eliminating discrimination against a group of people seldom result in immediate changes. In addition, no programs were promoted to aid the Burakumin in the period following emancipation; the boundaries of discrimination simply shifted after emancipation. The Burakumin were still labeled as “different,” and through social and economic controls, they remained within the communities in which they had lived for generations. These communities were known as Tokubetsu Buraku, or special hamlets, and became the source for calling the people Burakumin, or the people of the hamlet. The boundary of defining the Burakumin had shifted from their occupations to their residences, yet the discrimination remained. The categorization, however, continued to be fluid. Over time, through migration and urbanization, residents and even districts have been both added to and removed from official records. Yet because of the Japanese government’s system of family registry, the koseki, it is still possible to determine family background through government documents.
Aid to Buraku Communities Initially, after emancipation, there was little done by the national government to aid Buraku communities. This led to continued gaps in employment, education, and other social categories between Burakumin and majority Japanese. Large-scale aid from the national government to Buraku districts was provided from 1969 to 2002, greatly improving living conditions for the Burakumin. These laws provided funding for improving Buraku district infrastructure; increasing social welfare and health policies; and improving education. Under these laws, much of the structural discrimination
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against the Burakumin decreased, but discrimination against the Burakumin continues, most notably in areas of marriage and employment. Finally, because of a lack of any distinguishing features, many Burakumin can, and do, move freely through the majority society without those around them being aware of their minority membership. Unless one shares one’s background, it is impossible to know who is and who is not Burakumin. Christopher Bondy See also Discrimination; Japan; Nikkeijin
Further Readings
Davis, John H., Jr. 2000. “Blurring the Boundaries of the Buraku(min).” Pp. 110–122 in Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan, edited by J. S. Eades, T. Gill, and H. Befu. Victoria, Australia: Trans Pacific Press. DeVos, George and Hiroshi Wagatsuma. 1966. Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kitaguchi, Suehiro. 1999. An Introduction to the Buraku Issue: Questions and Answers. Translated by A. McLauchlan. Surrey, UK: Japan Library. Neary, Ian. 1997. “Burakumin in Contemporary Japan.” Pp. 50–78 in Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, edited by M. Weiner. London: Routledge.
BUREAU
OF INDIAN
AFFAIRS
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the U.S. federal executive agency charged with oversight of “recognized” Indian tribes and discharge of its “trust” responsibility over them. The BIA is the oldest federal agency in continuous existence. In what has been described as “the largest land trust in the world,” the BIA has jurisdiction over 55.7 million acres of land (“Indian Country,” i.e., lands created by statute: reservations, dependent communities, and allotments) held in trust by the United States for American Indians and Alaska Natives. (Some federally recognized tribes, however, are landless.) The Snyder Act of 1921 authorizes the BIA to “direct, supervise, and expend such moneys as Congress may from time to time appropriate, for the benefit, care, and assistance of the Indians throughout the United States”; for “administration of Indian affairs,” including “general support and civilization”;
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and for “relief of distress and conservation of health.” In executing its federal trust obligation to American Indians, the BIA oversees Native land and water, heritage preservation, energy and minerals, probate, Indian gaming, law and order, fish and wildlife, health and human services, housing, education, tribal economic development, trust fund management and reform, and self-determination and self-governance. Thus, the BIA exercises federal superintendence on a massive scale. American Indians have a unique status under American law. Administrative responsibility for congressional policies affecting American Indians and Alaska Natives rests primarily with the BIA. BIA history, therefore, is closely tied to congressional policies, which have undergone dramatic shifts over the course of the BIA’s existence. Indian history—and the history of the BIA as an integral part of it—may be periodized in time periods reflecting distinctive phases of American Indian policy: Removal and Relocation (1828–1887), Reservation and Allotment (1887–1934), Reorganization and SelfGovernment (1934–1946), Termination and Relocation (1946–1961), and the Self-Determination Era (1961–present). Consequently, the BIA has an anomalous and complex relationship with Indian nations. Tribal recognition is a requirement for BIA services. By 1871, when Congress abolished treaty making with Indian nations, a total of 372 distinct tribes were recognized. Of these, 258 tribes were acknowledged under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. As of 2007, there are a total of 561 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, which now maintains “government-to-government” relationships with these American Indian nations. BIA services do not extend to unacknowledged Native tribes, however. In theory, while BIA nonrecognition may deprive a tribe of statutory benefits, it cannot divest that tribe’s vested treaty rights. Thus, the BIA panoptically “sees” only “recognized” American Indian tribes (as opposed to unacknowledged Indian “groups”) and oversees these Indian nations as “wards”—while now committed to respecting their internal sovereignty and taking measures to restore to American Indian nations some measure of their precolonial independence. This is far easier said than done. As a general rule of policy, the BIA oscillates between two polar opposites: Native American sovereignty and tribal dependence. Despite colonial recognition of Native American sovereignty, Native tribes constitute, under U.S. law, “domestic, dependent
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nations”—thus precluding domestic and international political recognition yet theoretically ensuring them self-government. “Domestic, dependent nations” are powerful federal Indian law words that sound in U.S. Supreme Court cases and resound throughout the entire body of federal Indian law and corresponding BIA regulations. The BIA was created by Congress as part of the War Department in 1834. (In 1824, the War Department had created an Office of Indian Affairs, but without congressional authorization.) The BIA’s enabling legislation couched malign policies in benign objectives. In theory, the BIA’s mission was to assist Native Americans and Native Alaskans in managing their affairs under a trust relationship with the federal government. In reality, this was a subsistence dependency of the conquered on their conqueror. In past practice, the BIA became an instrument of subjugation, land appropriation, forced assimilation, and, in some cases, annihilation. On September 8, 2000, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Kevin Gover (Pawnee), speaking on behalf of the BIA, offered a historic apology for the agency’s policies and actions over its 175-year history, particularly for the BIA’s devastating impact on American Indian nations—whether federally recognized, unrecognized, or extinct—through policies that in their most extreme forms ranged from extermination (physical genocide) to assimilation (cultural genocide). Thus, Gover took the occasion of the BIA’s 175th anniversary as an opportunity to make history by apologizing for it. Fortunately, BIA policy in the latter part of the 20th century transformed into an era of Indian “self-determination.” Accordingly, BIA history can best be seen within a framework of five distinct phases of congressional policy shifts in Indian affairs.
Removal and Relocation (1828–1887) Originally part of the War Department, the BIA was transferred to the Department of the Interior (DOI) in 1849. But the war metaphor persisted, and there were more “Indian wars” to be fought. A series of subsequent massacres of American Indians cast a pall over U.S. history: Blue Water Creek (1854), Bear River (1863), Sand Creek (1864), Washita River (1868), Sappa Creek (1875), Camp Robinson (1878), Wounded Knee (1890), and over forty others. There were also settlers pushing westward, and so it was deemed necessary to remove Native tribes that impeded the “manifest destiny” of the United States to
occupy the entire continent. Yet long before Columbus, American Indians had governed their own territories as sovereigns. Thus, they had original title (under concepts of stewardship) to their own lands. One may then ask, Why does the United States now own these lands, and how is it that the BIA oversees Indian Country? Under what has been described as “conquest by law,” the discovery of America dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their lands. The “Discovery Doctrine” ripened into law under the landmark Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823). Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the “discovering” European nations (and later the United States) held fee title to Indian Aboriginal lands, in that “that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it”—subject to the Indians’ right of occupancy and use. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) established the Trust Doctrine. Facing the prospect of forced removal, the Cherokee fought on legal grounds all the way to the Supreme Court. Justice Marshall declared that American Indians “may, more correctly, perhaps, be denominated domestic dependent nations” whose members were “wards” within the United States. Under existing peace treaties, the Cherokee were entitled to retain possessory interests (rights to occupy without owning land) and to exercise reserved rights. Worcester v. Georgia (1832) finally procured a favorable ruling for the Cherokees. But President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court. Jackson reportedly remarked, “Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now” (as reported by New York Tribune editor Horace Greely). The nonenforcement of the Court’s decision led to the infamous Cherokee “Trail of Tears” (1838–1839). The Indian Removal Act of 1830 extinguished Indian land rights east of the Mississippi River, forcing displacement of the Five Civilized Tribes west to Oklahoma territory (“Indian Country”). The BIA’s “first mission,” Gover stated in his historic apology, “was to execute the removal of the southeastern tribal nations.” By 1840, the BIA and the U.S. military had relocated more than thirty tribes to territory west of the Mississippi. Congress then enacted the Indian Appropriation Act (1851), the Homestead Act (1862), and the Railroads Act (1862), which established the legal basis for creating American Indian “reservations” and enforcing relocation of Indian tribes from traditional homelands onto Indian reservations. Treaty making is the one mechanism that the Constitution clearly provides with which the federal government may interact with sovereigns other than
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the states. During this period, however, treaties were made with American Indian nations to “treat away” Indian lands and to extinguish their claims to them. While many treaties ceded lands, some contained provisions for tribes to retain hunting, fishing, and gathering rights on the ceded lands. In theory, these treaty rights were preserved in perpetuity and, from a legal standpoint, were to be respected. From 1853 to 1856, however, the United States acquired 174 million acres of Native American lands through 52 treaties, all of which were subsequently broken. Unmoored from Supreme Court precedents, treaty making with American Indians was abolished. In 1871, Congress, by dint of its plenary power, decreed “that hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty” (Indian Appropriations Act of March 3, 1871, ch. 120, § 1). The emergence of the Plenary Power Doctrine (allowing Congress to override treaties) in Indian affairs in the 19th century has been a cornerstone of federal Indian law administered through the BIA.
Reservation and Allotment (1887–1934) Private allotment of reservation land was one of the primary tools of assimilation policy. It called for the dissolution of tribal land tenure through allotment of collectively held tribal land, to be divided into individual parcels deeded to tribal members (160 acres to each family head, 80 acres to each single person over 18 years old and to each orphan under 18). Between 1887 and 1932, this parceling of tribal lands through individual allotments to tribal members—administered through the BIA—resulted in a drastic reduction of the aggregate tribal land base, with “surplus” land either ceded to the government or sold to White settlers. In 1887, Native Americans held 138 million acres of reservation lands. By 1934, when the Dawes Act was repealed, Native landholdings were reduced to only 52 million acres. Privatizing Native land seriously eroded tribalism, increased welfare dependency, and paved the way for forced assimilation. Forced assimilation through Indian boarding schools was a policy also administered by the BIA. In 1892, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Industrial Indian School, articulated the theory that became the justification for forced assimilation. Pratt argued that society had a duty to “civilize”
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Indians by eliminating their Indian identity; the school’s goal was to “kill the Indian to save the man.” Forced assimilation was a form of social engineering. In what has been termed natal alienation—removal from homeland and severance of cultural ties, a concept originating in Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death (1982)—Native American children, under BIA auspices, were removed from their parents and reservations at an early age. In a practice that lasted as late as 1968, the BIA granted churches land patents to run mission (boarding) schools and gave them control of Indians’ treaty rations. Native children were placed in boarding schools where Native languages and religions were suppressed. Many children were subjected to beatings, whippings, and sexual abuse well into the 20th century. Denial of parental visitation advanced the process of assimilation. Here, the BIA was the effective instrument of cultural patrimony occasioned by the alienation and indoctrination of indigenous children. In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to all American Indians born in the United States. In 1928, the Institute for Government Research conducted a 2-year survey of Indian affairs and published “The Problem of Indian Administration” (known as “the Meriam Commission report”), which issued a stinging indictment of federal Indian policy and called for sweeping changes, recommending that the goal of Indian policy should be the development of all that is good in Indian culture “rather than to crush out all that is Indian.” This highly influential finding paved the way for policy reform known as the “Indian New Deal.”
Reorganization and Self-Government (1934–1946) The Wheeler-Howard Act, known as the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, promoted tribal reorganization and self-government. The IRA halted land allotments, ordered the return of Indian lands, provided reservation economic development capital, and authorized tribes to adopt constitutions (based on boilerplate constitutions) subject to approval by tribal membership and the secretary of the interior. This otherwise benign policy had a negative impact, however. While the IRA conferred the power of self-government, the BIA effectively forced majority rule (“IRA governments”) on tribes, thereby usurping existing tribal social and political leadership through abandoning
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traditional tribal organization (systems of kinship, clan, and community) and traditional, consensus-based approaches to decision making. To finally resolve all residual tribal claims, the Indian Land Claims Commission Act (1946) established the Indian Claims Commission, to hear suits brought by Indian tribes against the United States. The act set August 31, 1951, as its deadline, foreclosing any claims that arose between 1776 and 1946. Some 852 petitions were filed by tribes, establishing 370 cases. But these cases were not heard until 1974. This tribal renaissance was short-lived, however.
Termination and Relocation (1946–1961) In 1953, Congress adopted House Concurrent Resolution 108 (popularly known as the “termination policy”). In order “to end [Indians’] status as wards of the United States,” this resolution sought to extinguish the political status of tribes and their trust relationship with the United States. Between 1953 and 1968, more than 100 American Indian tribes were legally “terminated”—thus severing federal trust obligations— and more than 1,360,000 acres of tribal land were transferred to the public domain, privatized, and sold. To make matters worse, the BIA, through its Direct Employment Program (better known as the “relocation program”), induced American Indians to move from rural to urban areas, where employment prospects were thought to be better. Between 1953 and 1970, “relocation centers” in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, and Chicago drew more than 90,000 American Indians away from their reservations. In effect, termination was the ultimate assimilation policy.
The Self-Determination Era (1961–Present) The current BIA policy of “self-determination” has its origins in President Nixon’s “Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs” (July 8, 1970). Passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA) in 1975 permitted tribes to operate federally funded educational programs. On the formal request of an Indian tribe, the ISDEAA directs the secretary of the interior and the secretary of health and human services to turn over to that tribe the direct operation of its federal Indian programs. The secretary and the tribe then enter into a “self-determination
contract” that must incorporate provisions of a model contract included in the ISDEAA. In further legislation enacted in 1988, the Tribally Controlled Schools Act directed the BIA to make grants to tribes operating BIA-funded schools. This policy has empowered many tribes to gain a de facto sovereignty by exercising power to direct their own tribal development. The BIA operates school systems on sixty-three reservations in twenty-three states and provides adult education for some 30,000 adult Native American students at twentyfive BIA-funded, tribally controlled community colleges and universities—with an additional 1,600 Native American adults at two colleges operated by the BIA. Tribal justice is an integral aspect of selfgovernment. In 1968, Congress imposed limits on tribal criminal jurisdiction under the Indian Civil Rights Act by limiting tribal powers to define and punish offenses. It also imposed upon tribal governments the provisions of Article III and the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. However, the BIA is precluded from imposing federal standards on tribal courts. The BIA also funds courts commonly called “Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Courts,” which are considered agencies of both the federal government and tribal courts. The BIA also administers twenty-two Courts of Indian Offenses. Through its Office of Law Enforcement Services (OLES), the BIA implements the Indian Law Enforcement Reform Act (1990). Trust management, education, energy, law enforcement, and self-determination were highlighted in President George W. Bush’s proposed $2.2 billion budget for the BIA for fiscal year 2007. Of these, ongoing trust reform and fiscal discipline of the Bureau’s trust management system remains a top priority, as it has been since a class action lawsuit in 1999 scandalized the BIA and led to pressure for trust reform. Pursuant to federal statutes, the BIA manages certain funds on behalf of individual American Indians and tribes. Despite its trust obligations, however, the BIA has breached its common law fiduciary obligations in its gross mismanagement of over $500 million in 300,000 Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts. In Cobell v. Babbitt (1999), a class action lawsuit that dominated the actions of the BIA for several years, a federal court found that the real purpose of the trust doctrine was to effectively “deprive [Indians] of their native lands and rid the nation of their tribal identity” and to avail tribal lands and resources to non-Indians. At one point in the litigation, district court judge Royce Lamberth
Bureau of Indian Affairs
declared, “I have never seen more egregious misconduct by the federal government.” Subsequent trust reform has led to major BIA reorganization. Indian self-determination entails self-governance, actuated by a gradual transfer from the BIA to tribes, of programs previously administered by the BIA, as well as funding to run them. In 1994, Congress established the Self-Governance Program under Title II of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act amendments. In the DOI, the Office of Self-Governance (OSG) administers tribal self-governance as it relates to BIA programs. Up to fifty tribes (or consortia of tribes) annually can participate in the program. Self-governance tribes must negotiate a self-governance “compact” that applies to all bureaus within the DOI, not just the BIA. Each tribe also concludes an Annual Funding Agreement with the BIA that specifies those programs that are transferred to the tribe and those retained by the BIA. In October 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Indian Self-Determination Contract Reform Act. In 1994, the Self-Governance Permanent Authorization Act was passed, in which Congress expressed its satisfaction with the BIA Self-Governance Demonstration Project and established self-governance as a permanent program within the DOI. On April 30, 2004, on express recommendations by the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13336 on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, declaring support for tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, languages, and cultures. “Self-determination” and “sovereignty” are policy markers that are here to stay. The future of federal Indian policy therefore depends on how tensions between greater tribal self-governance and continuation of the federal trust responsibility are best resolved. Christopher George Buck See Appendix B See also Canada, First Nations; Identity Politics; Internalized Racism; Kennewick Man; Marginalization; Minority/ Majority; Native American Health Care; Nativism; Pluralism; Prejudice; Race, Social Construction of; Racialization; Religion, Minority; Social Capital; Sovereignty, Native American; Water Rights
Further Readings
Buck, Christopher. 2006. “‘Never Again’: Kevin Gover’s Apology for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies 21:97–126.
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Cross, Raymond. 2003. “The Federal Trust Duty in an Age of Indian Self-Determination: An Epitaph for a Dying Doctrine?” Tulsa Law Review 39. Gover, Kevin, Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs. 2000. “Remarks at the Ceremony Acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Sept. 8, 2000).” Reprinted in American Indian Law Review 25:161, 2000–2001. McCarthy, Robert. 2004. “The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal Trust Obligation to American Indians.” BYU Journal of Public Law 19:4–160. Wilkins, David E. and Tsianina Lomanwaima. 2001. Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Legislation
Indian Removal Act of 1830 (Act of May 28, 1830, 4 Stat. 411). Act of June 30, 1834, Ch. 162, 4 Stat. 735 (codified in part as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 9, 40, 45, 48, 60, 62, 68) (creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs by Congress). Indian Appropriation Act of February 27, 1851 (9 St. 587) (granting Congress authority to establish Indian reservations). Homestead Act of 1862, 12 Stat. 392 (granting 250 million acres of Indian land to settlers for as low as $1.00/acre). Indian Appropriations Act of March 3, 1871, ch. 120, § 1, 16 Stat. 544, 566 (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. § 71, 1994) (ending treaty making between the federal government and the tribes but upholding the obligation of existing treaties). Act of July 1, 1862, ch. 120, 12 Stat. 489, amended by Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Act of July 2, 1864, ch. 216, 13 Stat. 356 (creating Union Pacific Railroad). (“The United States shall extinguish as rapidly as may be the Indian titles to all lands falling under the operation of this act.”) The Indian General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act), ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388 (1887) (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 331–334, 339, 341–342, 348–349, 354, 381, 2000) (repealed 1934). Act of November 2, 1921 (Snyder Act), Pub. L. No. 115, 42 Stat. 208 (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. § 13, 2004). Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Act of June 2, 1924, 43 Stat. 253. Indian Reorganization Act (Wheeler-Howard Act), ch. 576, 48 Stat. 984 (1934) (current version at 25 U.S.C. §§ 461–479, 2000). Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 726, Ch. 959, § 2, 60 Stat. 1049, codified at 25 U.S.C. §§ 70–70v-3 (1976). House Concurrent Resolution 108, H. R. Con. Res. 108, 83rd Cong., 1st Sess., 67 Stat. B132 (1953) (popularly known as the “Termination Policy”). Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, 25 U.S.C. § 1301 (2000).
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Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, 25 U.S.C. § 450(a), (f) (2004). Tribally Controlled Schools Act of 1988, 25 U.S.C. §§ 2501–2511 (2004). Tribal Self-Governance Program, under Title II of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act Amendments of 1994. Act of Oct. 25, 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-413, 108 Stat. 4250 (codified at 25 U.S.C. § 458aa–gg). Indian Law Enforcement Reform Act, Public Law (1990), Pub. L. No. 101-379, 25 U.S.C. 2801.
Self-Governance Permanent Authorization, Title II, Indian Self-Determination Contract Reform Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-413, 108 Stat. 4254.
BURMESE AMERICANS See MYANMARESE AMERICANS
C communist reforms instituted by the Khmer Rouge, who controlled Cambodia’s government from April 1975 to late December 1978. Cambodians arrived in the United States during an economic recession and a time of growing social and political conservatism, which would lead to significant reductions in public assistance programs. Because Cambodians had no prior immigration history with the United States, there were no well-established Cambodian communities to provide linguistic, emotional, and economic support for adjustment. Strong communities have since formed, and a variety of social and economic advances have been made, but many of the traumas, illnesses, and disadvantages from the early days of immigration remain evident within the population. This entry looks at the history of Cambodians in the United States and then describes the current community.
CAMBODIAN AMERICANS Cambodians are a relatively new immigrant group to the United States, arriving in significant numbers following the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in April 1975. As a group, Cambodians made up about 15% of the over 1 million refugees arriving from Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1993. A key feature of this immigrant group is that they came to the United States as refugees with a high degree of physical and psychological trauma resulting from the radical
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Immigration History Cambodian Americans generally divide their immigration to the United States into three time periods, corresponding with the changing political situation in Cambodia and their experience of war and trauma. The first period of immigration began in the 1950s and includes some 200 students and professionals who came to study and work in the United States. This period ended in 1965, when Norodom Sihanouk, then head of state of Cambodia, cut off diplomatic relations with the United States. The second immigration period began in 1970 after Marshall Lon Nol took control of the Cambodian government and restored relations with the United States. Between 1970 and 1974, roughly 500 military
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personnel, students, and immigrants arrived. In April 1975, as the Khmer Rouge solidified their control of the country, 4,600 individuals who had connections to the U.S. government and military were evacuated from Cambodia to the United States. Between 1976 and 1978, another 2,700 military, ambassadors, students, and professionals who were outside Cambodia when it fell to the Khmer Rouge were admitted to the United States as part of a family reunification program. The third period of immigration is the largest and longest and was composed of the nearly 140,000 individuals arriving after 1979, most of whom had lived in Cambodia during the deadly “Pol Pot Time,” so called by Cambodians for the man who headed this regime. Within days of taking control of Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge evacuated the cities, abolished money, and shut down all businesses, markets, and public institutions, including schools and hospitals. In many parts of the country, families were separated by age and gender and assigned to work groups. Every aspect of life was monitored by the Khmer Rouge, including where people lived, who they talked to, and what they could eat and when. Educated individuals were targeted for extermination, and anyone who disobeyed the orders of the Khmer Rouge faced the very real possibility of execution. It is estimated that 1 to 1.5 million men, women, and children were murdered or died of disease and overwork during this time. Distinctions in socioeconomic background and personal experience between individuals of the first two immigration periods and those of the third are significant. The first two groups were composed of individuals who were educated in Western-style schools and had some experience with both urban settings and countries and cultures outside Cambodia. This contrasts significantly with the 93% of Cambodians arriving in the United States between 1979 and 1993 who came from rural areas.
Resettlement in the United States A primary concern for U.S. policymakers has been how to ease the economic burden of resettling not just the Cambodians but all of the over 1 million Southeast Asian refugees. The U.S. government favored getting people to work quickly and preventing them from forming dense communities, which it was believed would adversely affect English language learning,
encourage dependency on co-ethnics, and slow down assimilation. In 1981, the Office of Refugee Resettlement instituted the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Associations Project (CMAAP) to design and direct a “Cambodian Cluster Project” (also known as the Khmer Guided Placement Program). Cambodian refugees were placed in one of twelve midsized cities throughout the United States, which had been selected based on criteria that included employment opportunities, an existing refugee population, and affordable housing. However, through a phenomenon known as secondary migration, nearly half of all refugees moved away from their initial resettlement areas within the first 2 years, usually to be with family or large refugee communities. In the case of Cambodian Americans, the areas of greatest attraction were Southern and Central California; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Seattle, Washington.
Population Characteristics The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 172,000 Cambodians lived in the United States in 2000. An additional 34,000 individuals identified themselves as Cambodian in combination with other ethnicities, for a total of approximately 206,000. Of this total population, 137,000, or roughly two-thirds, gave Cambodia as their country of birth. Cambodians live in all fifty states; however, the largest number resides in California, which is home to 84,500, or 41%, of the total Cambodian population in the United States. The largest single population is in Long Beach, California, often referred to as the “Cambodian capital of the United States.” Although accurate population figures for Long Beach are not available, the Los Angeles County metropolitan area contains nearly 44,000 Cambodians, the majority of whom are believed to live within the Long Beach city limits. Lowell, Massachusetts, is home to the secondlargest population, and Seattle, Washington, is home to the third. Sizable and well-known populations are also found in San Francisco; Stockton; Philadelphia; Providence; Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Fresno; Minneapolis; New York; and Dallas. The Cambodian American population is diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, class, education, and experience of war and deprivation. The major ethnic group from Cambodia is Khmer (pronounced without the final “r”). Other ethnic groups making up the Cambodian
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refugee population in the United States include Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Cham (a Muslim minority group), and Khmer Leou (highland Khmer).
part of the informal economy centered on the garment industry, doing piecework in their homes or in smallscale sewing “factories.”
Socio oecconomic Characte erisstics
Health
Socioeconomic indicators for Cambodian Americans are lower than those of other Asian groups in the United States but have shown significant improvement over the last 10 years. In the 1990 census, the estimated per capita income for Cambodian Americans was $5,000 but had risen to over $17,600 by 2000. In the same 10-year span, the percentage of Cambodian American families living below the poverty level was reduced from 42% to just over 25%. The high rate of poverty is linked to a number of factors. Debilitating trauma and limited English language skills play a major role. In addition, the majority of Cambodian Americans had been rural agriculturalists with limited formal education and little understanding of the U.S. job market. Those individuals who did hold professional degrees were underemployed in the United States, which aggravated depression in this segment of the population. As a new immigrant group to the United States, Cambodian Americans had no well-established communities that could mitigate some of the adjustment problems by providing places to live, jobs, and translation. One exception was the Cambodian community in Long Beach, California, which had been in existence a little over 3 years when the largest group of Cambodians began arriving in 1979. Another contributing factor to the high poverty rate was the disproportionate number of widows. Of those families living below the poverty level in 2000, over 46% were headed by single females, who on average earn 25% less than their male counterparts. The 2000 census showed Cambodian Americans have found their greatest employment opportunities in manufacturing, sales, and office occupations. In local communities, Cambodian Americans are employed in social services and education and as medical and court interpreters. Like other immigrant groups to the United States, many have opened small, family-run businesses catering to non-Cambodians. Among the most successful have been doughnut and auto repair shops. Where the community is large enough, Cambodian Americans have opened businesses serving the needs of the community. These include groceries, restaurants, video rentals, tailors, and jewelers. In larger cities, Cambodian Americans have become
The majority of Cambodians who came as refugees suffered from an array of physical and emotional illnesses directly attributable to the extreme conditions of daily life under the Khmer Rouge. The types of trauma individuals were exposed to included physical injury or torture, imprisonment, and witnessing the killing or torture of others, most often of close friends and family members. Two-thirds of Cambodian women experienced rape, loss of a spouse, or loss of a child. Illnesses present among Cambodian Americans born in Cambodia included tuberculosis, hepatitis (leading to high rates of liver cancer in the present population), and gastrointestinal problems. The population also suffers from high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder and major depression, usually associated with severe headaches, backache, dizziness, and recurring nightmares. Language barriers, differing cultural definitions of illness, and differing health seeking behaviors have meant that many of these problems have been, and continue to be, inadequately treated.
Cultural Recreation and Maintenance Language
The national language of Cambodia (a country with an estimated 2007 population of 14.4 million) and the language spoken at home by over 90% of Cambodians is Khmer, a nontonal Austroasiatic language of the Mon-Khmer language family. Cambodian Americans of Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, or Laotian descent may also speak and read the languages associated with their ethnic heritage. English language learning has been relatively easy for younger Cambodian Americans who are in school but has been more difficult for adults, especially the elderly and those who are isolated from the English-speaking population because of health or emotional disabilities that prevent them from working or because they work in their home. The Khmer script seen on many Cambodian American businesses is derived from a Brahmi script from South India, which was probably introduced to the Khmer sometime prior to the 2nd century. It is not
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uncommon for literate Cambodian American parents to teach their children the fundamentals of reading and writing Khmer. More formal Khmer literacy classes have been established in many communities across the country. Relig gious Practice es
The majority of Cambodian Americans are Theravada Buddhists. The form they practice incorporates animistic beliefs (a trait shared with many culture groups in Southeast Asia) and Hindu elements (retained from the Khmer Empire, which controlled most of Mainland Southeast Asia from the 9th to the 14th century). Traditional Cambodian culture centered on the daily activities of the wat, the Khmer word for the Buddhist temple complex. The wat was not only the religious but also the social and educational center of village life. For Cambodian Americans, the establishment of Buddhist temples in the United States has been a high priority. Every large population able to gather the funds has constructed at least one temple. Long Beach, California, as home to the largest concentration of Cambodians in the United States, has at least ten temples of varying sizes. Christians were a minority in Cambodia prior to 1975, making up about 1% of the population. The number of Cambodian Christians in the United States is growing as a result of exposure to Christian aid workers in the refugee camps in Thailand; the high number of Christian individuals, churches, and organizations that sponsored Cambodians to the United States in the early years of migration; and continuing contact with Christians in the United States after resettlement. Upon arriving in the United States, young Cambodians found church activities offered a good opportunity for meeting Americans and learning English. Muslims made up 3% to 4% of the Cambodian population prior to 1975. The dominant Muslim group in Cambodia was the Chams, an ethnic group originally from central Vietnam that was forced to migrate to Cambodia in the 1700s under pressure from the southward-moving Vietnamese. About 20% of the Muslims in Cambodia were ethnic Khmer. An estimated 2,000 Cambodian American Muslims currently live in the United States. Dan nce and Music
Classical Khmer court dance and music are core elements of Cambodian culture and identity. The
image of the apsara (celestial dancer) can be seen everywhere in Cambodian American communities, along with images of Angkor Wat, the 12th-century Hindu temple of the Khmer empire. Often referred to as the “heart and soul of Khmer culture,” dance is considered to be a form of worship and prayer. Prior to 1975, this highly stylized, formal dance was performed only for the king and other important officials. Ordinary people rarely saw it performed. Among Cambodian Americans, the dance is both a receptacle and symbol of their culture, and it is performed frequently for Cambodian and American audiences. Practically every Cambodian American community, no matter its size, has organized dance classes for its young girls. When an instructor is not available, videotapes are used. The dance is performed at many Cambodian American cultural events and celebrations, such as the Cambodian New Year in midApril. Most often, the dancers are accompanied by taped music, but a few communities, such as Long Beach, have musicians who perform with the dancers and also teach young boys how to play the instruments. Susan Needham See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Genocide; Health, Immigrant; Immigrant Communities; Informal Economy; Refugees
Further Readings
Ablin, David and Marlowe Hood, eds. 1987. The Cambodian Agony. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Chan, Sucheng. 2004. Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Chandler, David. 1991. The Tragedy of Cambodian History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ebihara, May. 1985. “Khmer.” Pp. 127–147 in Refugees in the United States: A Reference Handbook, edited by D. Haines. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Mortland, Carol and Judy Ledgerwood. 1987. “Secondary Migration Among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Urban Anthropology 16:291–326. Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Phim, Toni Samantha and Ashley Thompson. 2001. Dance in Cambodia. Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia: Oxford University Press. Ratliff, Sharon K. 1997. Caring for Cambodian Americans: A Multidisciplinary Resource for the Helping Professions. New York: Garland.
Canada
Reeves, Terrance and Claudette Bennett. 2004. We the People: Asians in the United States. Census 2000 Special Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
CANADA The original inhabitants of Canada are the Aboriginals, or First Nations. They suffered from colonization and loss of their land due to the arrival of the French and English, known as Charter Groups because of their role as the first immigrant groups and the nation’s founding communities. Other racial and ethnic groups, including Asians and Blacks, arrived in Canada well before the 19th and early 20th centuries through forced or voluntary migration, and large-scale immigration to Canada continues today. These groups have also suffered from exclusion and discrimination and for years struggled for political rights and social recognition. Today, Canada—a country with an estimated population in 2007 of 32.9 million people—is known as a bilingual and multicultural society that has demonstrated success in managing the interests of Aboriginals, French and English Charter Groups, and many other diverse racial and ethnic groups. The official languages of Canada are English and French. Still, throughout most of Canada’s history, the country has been perceived as predominantly British in its orientation. At the time of confederation, 60% of the population was British and 30% French; in 1991, 41% were British and 28% French. This entry provides an overview of issues related to race and ethnicity in Canada, looks at the historical experience of several key immigrant groups, and describes today’s multicultural environment. The First Nations are discussed more completely in a separate entry.
Background Geographically, Canada has the second-largest land area of all the world’s nations. It is made up of 10 provinces: in Western Canada, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia; in Central Canada, Ontario and Quebec; and in Eastern Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The three territories are the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. The Confederation of Canada came about on July 1, 1867, through the British North American Act. Canada is a constitutional monarchy, which has Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. As a federal
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system of parliamentary government, there are three levels of government: federal, provincial, and municipal. The Charter Groups played an important role in establishing the political, social, and economic institutions of the country. The founding of Canada was based on the colonization of its Indigenous Peoples, the exploitation of immigrant labor, and the reality that the White settlers of Canada held privileged political, social, and economic power in the country. Historically, Canada’s past includes policies and practices that overtly discriminated against the Chinese Canadians, South Asian Canadians, Japanese Canadians, Blacks, Jewish émigrés, and Ukrainians. For instance, the 1910 Immigration Act determined which immigrants were and were not allowed into Canada. People were rejected on the assumption that some groups would not fit into Canada due to the climate and their educational and social standing. Such selection criteria gave immigration officials the ability to discriminate on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, and creed. In addition, the government established a list of preferred and nonpreferred countries from which to receive immigrants. The preferred countries were the United Kingdom and United States, followed by northern and western Europe. People from Greece, Syria, and Turkey, along with European Jews, needed a special permit class to be able to emigrate. Today, the Ministry of Industry notes that Canada welcomes over 200,000 immigrants each year, and they account for almost 60% of the nation’s population growth. According to the 2001 census, immigrants from China, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Taiwan accounted for over 40% of all immigrants who came to Canada between 1991 and 2001. Of the total Canadian population of 30 million, 4 million individuals identified themselves as visible minorities: people who are non-White, non-Aboriginal, and non-Caucasian, whatever their place of birth. Between the years 1993 and 2003, quality-of-life surveys have ranked Canada as one of the best places to live in the world in regard to wealth, education, and life expectancy.
Historical Discrimination The historical experiences of various groups have left reminders of racism with its changing forms. This section looks at some of those immigrant communities.
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Chinese Canadians. Anti-Chinese legislative acts were implemented in the 1800s to limit the political and civil rights of Chinese people and their ability to immigrate to Canada. Because Canada needed cheap labor to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, the government still allowed the entry of the Chinese into the country, so long as each person paid a head tax of $50 in 1888, raised to $500 by 1903. Chinese Canadians played an important role in contributing to the prosperity and building of Canada. They were the ones who did the most menial, dangerous, and difficult work that no one else wanted to do, including the building of railways, bridges, and roads and work in coal mines and mills. Between the years 1923 and 1947, the Canadian government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred any immigration to Canada from China. The Chinese Canadians did not receive the right to vote until 1947. African (Black) Canadians. The racial segregation of and discrimination against “free” Black people is also a part of the history of Canada. Black slaves who had been emancipated in American colonies and entered Canada as “free” persons still worked as indentured servants. Furthermore, many unemployed Whites of the period resented Blacks being paid for work, despite the fact that Blacks earned one-quarter of the wages of White people. The first race riots broke out in Shelbourne and Birchtown, Nova Scotia, in 1784. The historical and persistent hatred and resentment toward Blacks has resulted in many Blacks living today in segregated communities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario. Japanese Canadians. The Japanese Canadians have been in Canada since the 1870s. Like Chinese Canadians, they experienced economic exploitation and received lower pay than the White laborers. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese Canadians, along with the Chinese and East Indians, experienced negative discrimination, which resulted in one of the worst race riots in British Columbia’s history. Fueling anti-Asian sentiment in the 1930s was the Japanese invasion of China. Xenophobic attitudes and racist political responses to the Japanese throughout North America resulted in the unprecedented action of the Canadian government relocating Japanese Canadians, including Canadian born and naturalized citizens, to detention camps in isolated areas of British Columbia. Their property was confiscated, and they were incarcerated in jails and
made to do forced labor on road construction projects or sugar beet farms. It was not until 1988 that a formal apology was made by the Canadian government and a $20,000 financial compensation was given to Japanese Canadians still living who had suffered from past discrimination. South Asian Canadians. South Asian Canadians include people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Bangladesh regardless of place of birth. People who have roots in South Asia but who emigrated from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Caribbean nations, and other countries are also included in this category. South Asians experienced harsh racial discrimination and in British Columbia were negatively labeled as the “Hindu invasion.” South Asian Canadians were denied political rights similarly to the Chinese and Japanese. In 1907, even though many South Asians had British citizenship rights, they were disenfranchised by the Canadian government and were not allowed to vote in provincial elections. Ukrainian Canadians. Ukrainian Canadians helped to settle Western Canada, and despite having white skin, they too experienced discrimination. The focus of the discrimination was based on the belief that certain groups could not adapt to Canadian values and society. The Ukrainian Canadians, along with the Finns and Jews, were seen as “dangerous foreigners” who potentially were socialist or communist sympathizers.
Today’s Multicultural Environment Despite its historical past and continuing struggles with racism, Canada has implemented government acts that are considered to be the “first” in the world. The Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 was the first to grant the same social, political, and economic rights enjoyed by native-born citizens of Canada to those who were new immigrants. In addition, the Immigration Act of 1967 abolished the selection criteria of new immigrants on the basis of quotas or race and ethnicity and established an immigration structure based on the skill sets of the émigrés, their level of education and knowledge of English and French, and the labor shortage needs of the country. Most important, Canada is the first country in the world to constitutionally recognize Aboriginal and treaty rights. In Canada, a persistent and predominant theme for government and policymakers is to address national identity, unity, multiculturalism, and
Canada, Aboriginal Women
Aboriginal rights in the context of managing minority power relations. Canada is a nation that prides itself on maintaining national unity in the context of an ethnically and racially diverse society, despite a history that includes racism. Through the tenets of multiculturalism, Canada has encouraged people to maintain their ethnic identity, while at the same time acknowledging what it means to be Canadian. Such recognition by government lawmakers is reflected in the Multiculturalism Act of 1988, which was earlier entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. June Ying Yee See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Canada; Canada, Aboriginal Women; Canada, First Nations; Foreign Students; Hate Crimes; Muslims in Canada
Further Readings
Bolari, B. Singh and Peter S. Li. 1988. Racial Oppression in Canada. 2nd ed. Toronto, Canada: Garamond Press. Canada eBook. 2007. The People. Retrieved from http://www43.statcan.ca/02/02_000_e.htm Fleras, Augie and Jean Leonard Elliott. 2007. Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race, Ethnic, and Aboriginal Dynamics in Canada. 5th ed. Toronto, Canada: Pearson Prentice Hall. Frideres, James S. 1999. “Altered States: Federal Policy and Aboriginal Peoples.” Pp. 115–146 in Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada, edited by P. S. Li. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press. Henry, Frances and Carol Tator. 2006. The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society. 3rd ed. Toronto, Canada: Nelson Thomson Canada. Ministry of Industry. 2005. Population Projections of Visible Minority Groups: Canada, Provinces and Regions, 2001–2017. Ottawa, Canada: Statistics Canada. Weinfeld, Morton and Lori Wilkinson. 1999. “Immigration, Diversity, and Minority Communities.” Pp. 55–87 in Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada, edited by P. S. Li. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press.
CANADA, ABORIGINAL WOMEN Efforts to define and control its indigenous population have a long history in Canada, often with serious consequences for women in the Aboriginal community.
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For more than a century before the Indian Act was amended in 1985, women who were born Indian in Canada lost legal status as Indians when they married men who were not Indians. This includes Aboriginal men from Canada or other countries not registered under the Indian Act. The clauses that first discriminated against Indian women and their children in the 1869 Enfranchisement Act gradually became more restrictive, remaining in effect until Bill C-31, an Act to Amend the Indian Act, was passed in 1985. Despite the several legislative revisions, Aboriginal women and their descendants still argue that they are being treated inequitably. This entry reviews the history of Indian acts as they have affected women.
Legislative History The Legislature of the Province of Canada enacted two Indian acts in 1850 ostensibly designed to protect Indians and the property they occupied in Upper Canada and Lower Canada. This early legislation included inclusive definitions of Indians. The Upper Canada legislation was designed to protect Indians and persons who married Indians, while the Lower Canada legislation identified specific groups of people as Indians. Indians included persons of Indian blood who belonged to a particular body or tribe of Indians and their descendants. Persons intermarried with and living with Indians and their descendants were also considered Indians, as were persons living with Indians whose parents on either side were Indians and persons adopted by the Indians as infants, and their descendants. The Province of Canada amended both acts 1 year after implementation to include all women married to Indian men and their descendants and to exclude all non-Indian men married to Indian women. After confederation, Parliament further revised the legal definition of Indian in the Lands and Enfranchisement Acts of 1868–1869. The 1869 act included a onequarter Indian blood quantum and stripped Indian women and their children of their status if the women married non-Indians. In addition, women who married Indians from other tribes or bands became members of their husbands’ tribes or bands, as did any children of these marriages. The Place of Women
When the 1869 legislation relegated Indian women to a status similar to that of European Canadian
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women, it did not reflect Indian customs. According to Jamieson, Aboriginal peoples such as the Iroquois and Maliseet were often matrilineal and matrilocal. In addition, Kirkness explains that since women are the first teachers, respect for Aboriginal women comes partially from this role, as illustrated by the absence of any distinction between male and female pronouns in many Aboriginal languages. The 1869 legislation not only failed to reflect Indian customs but was also based on a seemingly misguided belief that White husbands were a greater threat to Aboriginal communities than were White wives. While concerns that aggressive White men might monopolize reserve lands were perhaps understandable in an agrarian economy, Weaver points out that White wives were frequently powerful forces behind their Aboriginal farmer husbands. In addition, White wives could be seen as a threat to the culture of Aboriginal communities because they could not provide cultural and linguistic links for their children, seldom being well-versed in local customs. When the all-encompassing 1876 Indian Act became law, replacing various earlier pieces of legislation, it controlled every aspect of Indian life and redefined who was considered Indian. Indians were males of Indian blood, their children, and women lawfully married to Indian men. Indian women who married non-Indians were no longer considered Indians under the Indian Act, but they could still receive Indian monies. Under the 1920 Indian Act, however, a woman’s right to receive Indian monies could be commuted without her or the band’s permission. Intrroducing th he Registe er
There were additional major changes to the legislation in 1951. Provisions included an Indian Register maintained by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to record the name of every registered Indian and conditions for recognizing illegitimate children. Another provision that became known as the “Double Mother clause” denied registration to those whose mothers and fathers’ mothers were not registered Indians. In addition, prior to 1951, Indian women who married non-Indians could remain on the band list to receive annuities and band monies if they did not accept a lump sum payment when they lost their status, but they were not permitted to hold land on the reserve, and their children were not eligible for Indian status. According to Jamieson, however, after 1951, the
Governor in Council could declare Indian women who married non-Indians enfranchised as of the date of marriage. When the enfranchisement order was issued, women were required to sell or otherwise dispose of any property held on the reserve within 30 days. They were then entitled to receive a portion of the Indian monies the Crown held for the band plus an amount equal to 20 years’ worth of treaty payments. The increasingly restrictive Indian Act provisions remained in effect until Bill C-31 was passed in 1985. It is estimated that 25,000 Aboriginal peoples lost their status as Indians between 1876 and 1985. Douglas Sanders explained that the 1967 Royal Commission on the Status of Women helped draw public attention to the issue of sexual discrimination in the Indian Act, as did individual women who spoke publicly about how their lives were affected by what has been called their “statutory excommunication.” Jeannette Lavell, from Manitoulin Island, Ontario; Yvonne Bedard, from Six Nations, Ontario; and Sandra Lovelace, from Tobique, New Brunswick, waged a lengthy battle on numerous fronts before Bill C-31 became law.
The Women’s Appeal In 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the joint cases of Jeannette Lavell and Yvonne Bedard, both of whom had lost their status after marrying nonAboriginal men. According to Sanders, the Aboriginal community perceived legal challenges such as those by Lavell and Bedard as a threat to status under the Indian Act. Therefore, the provincial and territorial status Indian organizations and the National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations) intervened against the women, while the Native Council of Canada and the short-lived group Indian Rights for Indian Women intervened for the women. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act was exempt from the Canadian Bill of Rights. This section of the Indian Act declared that Indian women who married non-Indians were not entitled to be registered as Indians unless they subsequently became wives or widows of men who were considered Indians under the legislation. Consequently, taking this issue to the international forum was the only remaining avenue available to Aboriginal women. Therefore, Sandra Lovelace, a Maliseet woman from Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, fought the denial of her Indian status and band membership after her marriage to a non-Indian
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ended in divorce by lodging a complaint with the United Nations Committee on Human Rights under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Anne Bayefsky pointed out that while the United Nations Committee on Human Rights eventually ruled in Lovelace’s favor, the Canadian government’s failure to respond to repeated requests for information from the time Lovelace filed her complaint, on December 29, 1977, until the decision was adopted, on July 30, 1981, delayed the decision. Lovelace asserted in a submission to the United Nations that the major consequences of being excluded from her birth community included loss of identity and the right to live in an Indian community with her family, friends, and neighbors. The United Nations Human Rights Committee decided Lovelace was still being denied the right to live in her natal community and practice her native culture and language, which contravened Article 27 of the Covenant. Although the United Nations Human Rights Committee reached its decision in 1981, the Canadian government did not implement Bill C-31, “An Act to Amend the Indian Act,” until 1985. One reason for that delay was the death in Senate of the Liberal government’s proposed remedy—Bill C-47, an Act to Amend the Indian Act—just before the Liberals were defeated in the September 1984 election. Parliament finally passed Bill C-31 on June 17, 1985, backdating it to April 17, 1985, to comply with the equality rights outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When the 1985 Indian Act became law, it purportedly removed all discrimination from the Indian Act, restored Indian status and band membership rights to persons who had lost them, and granted partial control over band membership to Aboriginal communities.
The Current Plight Unfortunately, the legislation has not obtained its lofty goals. For instance, Bill C-31 failed to remove all discrimination from the Indian Act; reinstated women do not have the same ability to pass on status to their offspring as do others with status, such as White women who gained Indian status upon marriage. The Native Women’s Association of Canada finds this provision of the revised legislation deplorable, since members of Aboriginal peoples are forced to limit their choice of life partners to others within the decreasing status Indian population for their children to avoid losing status through the legislation’s second-generation cutoff.
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Since they rarely receive band membership and reserve residency, it can be virtually impossible for those reinstated under Bill C-31 to meet others with status, let alone marry them. However, failing to completely remove the sexual discrimination from the Indian Act is only one way that the 1985 amendment falls short of its goals. The legislation granted each band the right to assume partial control of its own membership, while providing automatic entitlement to membership for certain individuals. The legislation could not restore status and band membership to persons who had lost them, since the federal government grants status to those who apply for reinstatement but Aboriginal communities decide who receives membership. Aboriginal peoples who are still being denied Indian status have taken legal action against several bands that included the exclusionary provisions formerly in the Indian Act in their membership codes. Fern M. Paul See also Assimilation; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Canada; Canada, First Nations; Hate Crimes, Canada; Intermarriage; Native American Identity; Native Americans
Further Readings
Bayefsky, Anne F. 1982. “The Human Rights Committee and the Case of Sandra Lovelace.” Canadian Yearbook of International Law 20:244–266. Bear Nicholas, Andrea. 1994. “Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation: The Experience of Maliseet Women.” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 43:223–239. Holmes, Joan. 1987. Background Paper: Bill C-31, Equality or Disparity? The Effects of the New Indian Act on Native Women. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Jamieson, Kathleen. 1978. Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Jamieson, Kathleen. 1986. “Sex Discrimination and the Indian Act.” Pp. 112–136 in Arduous Journey: Canadian Indians and Decolonization, edited by J. R. Ponting. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart. Kirkness, Verna. 1986–1988. “Emerging Native Women.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 2:408–415. Sanders, Douglas. 1985. “The Renewal of Indian Special Status.” Pp. 529–563 in Equality Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, edited by A. F. Bayefsky and M. Eberts. Toronto, Canada: Carswell.
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Weaver, Sally M. 1983. “The Status of Indian Women.” Pp. 56–79 in Two Nations, Many Cultures: Ethnic Groups in Canada, edited by J. L. Elliot. Scarborough, Canada: Prentice Hall.
CANADA, FIRST NATIONS The First Nations of Canada are Indigenous Peoples whose cultures, traditions, and languages are as distinct as their regions of habitat. After immigrating to the North American continent long ago, their lifestyles diverged, ranging from the nomadic hunters of the West Coast, with their totems blanched by age and weathered environs, to the semisettled farmers of the East Coast, with fields of zea mayz. Europeans arrived to seize or reduce hunting and farming territories, and the First Nations became strangers in their own land. With European colonization, Indigenous Peoples saw their tribal religions, family lives, and cultures drastically changed and their tribal paraphernalia taken to museums. They were encouraged to reform their basic tribal personality structure and become “civilized” into the European mass culture. Indigenous Peoples continue to meet contemporary challenges. This entry describes the origins of the varied First Nations, their experience of colonization, and the contemporary situation.
Prehistory Once, scholars believed the only source of entry to the Americas from other continents was on foot over Beringia, or the Bering land bridge, prior to or after an ice age. Today, they are open to the possibility of shoreline and boat migrations from the Atlantic Coast as well as the Pacific. Prior to European contact, these tenacious First Nations populations had creatively and resourcefully assimilated environmental lessons and thereby dwelt in accordance with their homelands. Depending on their home regions, their customs and lifestyle differed. The Arctic People. The Inuit (“the People”) include the Labrador, the Ungava, the Baffin Island, the Iglulik, the Caribou, the Netsilik, the Copper, and the Mackenzie; they speak in three dialects: Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, and Inuvialuit. Derived from the xanthomelanous PaleoEskimo ancestry of the Dorset and Thule cultures, these people occupied areas of arctic climate around 2000 BC. Small migratory hunting groups with patriarchal
leaderships used acute navigational skills and developed ingenious adaptations to their harsh tundra environment. They built semisubterranean dwellings with a central hearth. Their conical summer huts were constructed of skins, as were their boats. Whales became their staple, apportioned among the villagers to provide food, fat for burning oil, bones for housing, and runners for the dogsleds. Walrus, polar bear, seal, and caribou were also hunted. Intricate carvings on bone and ivory by both ancient and contemporary arctic peoples are internationally renowned. The Eastern Subarctic People. The linguistic Eastern Algonquian tribes—the Cree, the Innu (MontagnaisNeskapi), the Ojibwa from Labrador, and the Kutchin from Quebec to Ontario—are seminomadic hunters. The men hunted caribou, moose, or buffalo, while women and children remained at a camp. Traditionally, these people traveled in small bands with no chief, but with guidance entrusted to a patriarchal leadership. Garments were intricately embroidered with dyed quills. The Grand Medicine Society (the Midewiwin) of the Ojibwa was a healing arts society with members of both sexes. The Eastern Woodlands People. Following seasonal game, the seminomadic Eastern Algonquian hunters of the Appalachian Highlands—the Chippewa (Ojibwa), Malecite, Micmac (Mi’kmaq), Montagnais, and Nipissing—relied on the caribou, deer, bear, seals, and walrus to provide food, clothing, bones for bows and arrows, and other implements for their survival. They also gathered berries and nuts and used sap from birch and maple, birch bark for their canoes, and bent saplings for shelter frames, with coverings of strips of sewn bark. The St. Lawrence Low Land and Southern Ontario People. The Iroquoian Farmers—the Huron, Cayuga, Mohawk, Neutral, Oneida, Onondaga, Petun, Seneca, and Tobacco tribes—built sturdy communal longhouses with sleeping quarters below and storage above. These were agricultural peoples, with granaries built underground and watchmen to guard their fields from birds and animals. The tribes were largely sedentary, resettling approximately every 10 to 15 years, contingent upon the soil’s condition. Their healers were members of the False Face Society, who carved their masks from living trees, and the crop prophets of the Husk Face Society. The Five Nation Confederacy, formed by the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Seneca, was divided into five strips of land from
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the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Like the Tlingit tribes of southeast Alaska, these tribes were fierce warriors who enforced an abbroachment (monopolizing goods or forestalling a market) concerning the fur trade between the surrounding tribes and the Europeans. The Plains People. Evidence of the Clovis culture, the most ancient peoples recorded as yet, has been discovered in the plains area of the Buffalo People, the Algonquians (the Blackfoot, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa); the Siouan (the Assiniboine and the Sioux); and in the west, the Athabaskan tribe, the Scarcee. Their sustenance, though they lived on arable lands, consisted of the bounteous buffalo, which yielded provisions of meat, hides for clothing and shelter, fuel, and other necessities. With the advent of the horse, the buffalo hunt was greatly improved, and this dramatically revolutionized the culture of the Plains People. The horse proved to be yare (responding quickly and truly), compared with the temperament of the dog, for travois pulling and packs. By gelding their horses, the Plains People developed a smaller, faster horse, for example, the Pinto. They also invented an argot of hand signals to
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overcome language barriers and communicate with the numerous Plains People and surrounding tribes. The Plateau People. The Interior Salish tribes—the Shuswap, Lillooet, Thompson, Lakes, and Okanogan— along with their extended family, the Kutenai (Kootenay), and the Athabaskan tribe, the Carrier, are the widely dispersed seminomadic tribes that live between the coastal mountains and the Rockies. Their subsistence came from salmon, caribou, moose, deer, mountain goat, and bear. Due to their central location on the continent, their customs and mannerisms are an agglomeration of traditions from the surrounding tribes: potlatches and hierarchies of the Pacific Coast, along with clothing styles and dwelling construction from the Plains People. The Columbian Plateau region possesses the rich history of their rock art, illustrating humans, embodied spirits, and animal figures. There are also petroglyphs and pictographs of the Old Cordilleran culture, and Stanley A. Copp has dated some of the figures at more than 2,000 years old. Pacific Coastal People. The complex societies of the “Hunters of the Sea” consisted of the Kwakwaka’wakw
A Haida gift offering to the Tlingit. There has been a debate between the Tlingits and the Haida over the ownership of Prince of Wales Island (POW) in Alaska. The Haida Gwaii of the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia began migrating to the POW and occupied villages with Tlingit names, except for Hydaburg. Here, Kaigani Haida Sáádùùts Peele (in the stern) is bringing the Spirit of Peace canoe to the Tlingit village of Klawock, as a gift offering. Source: Photograph by Pamela Rae Huteson.
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(Kwakiutl), Salish, Haida, Tsimshian, Heiltsuk (Bella Bella), Nuxàlk (Bella Coola), and Tlingit. The salmon and cedar were indispensable for their societies. Minimal hunting on land was required, as most winter provisions were obtained from the four abundant varieties of salmon gathered and dried for winter, along with halibut, red snapper, and other seafood. These tribes were adroit carvers and weavers, embodying their legends in cedar upon their “Big Houses,” canoes, totem poles, bentwood boxes, and woven Chilkat blankets. The economic base of the Pacific Coastal People centered on the ceremony, prominence, and xenial (or hospitality) protocol of the potlatch, with the accruement and distribution of property. These were a powerful people; warriors wore wooden slate or moose hide breastplates and carried stone head clubs called “slave killers” and steering paddles used to pierce eyes. The Western Subarctic People. The Dené (Athabaskan) tribes—the Kutchin, Slave, Dogrib, and Chipewyan— and the Inland Tlingit had a culture that reflected the Athabaskan, along with the Wolf and the Crow, whereas the coastal Tlingits followed the Wolf/Eagle and the Raven traditions. The Métis, who learned the art of embroidery at French Canadian convents on the East Coast, brought this skill along as they migrated westward, using it with designs resembling the birch paper “bite” designs. They shared this art with other tribes, so that the Octopus Bags of the Tlingit resemble the Fire Bags of the Dené, which are similar to the Friendship Bags of the Great Lakes. These were the seminomadic Caribou People, with small bands following those great herds. Theirs was a life of sharing; even in contemporary times, a hunter will share his catch with the village.
Early European Contact The eastern tribes were the first to encounter the Europeans, and Friendship Treaties were signed along the St. Lawrence River area. Outright war between tribes in ancient days was a rarity; an act of bravery was respected and could settle most conflicts or situations. The advent of guns, however, as part of the European’s art of war, brought increased warfare and tragedy among the Indigenous People. Between diseases brought by the Europeans and violent confrontations with them, entire tribes experienced hardship that decimated their numbers throughout Canada. Indeed, the Beothuk people of Newfoundland became extinct in 1829.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 (later to be known as the Indian Bill of Rights) designated the entire center of Canada as a Native Reserve. After assisting both sides in the Europeans’ fight for territory in the “New World,” the First Nations found their remuneration was to become the new enemy of the budding governments. Officials sometimes viewed the First Nations as keeping the government from attaining more land; as a result, treaties were soon broken by the very governments who initiated them. Part of the agenda of missionaries and boarding schools was to erase the Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and accustom them to European standards, a way of life that was unnatural to the First Nations. In some instances, matriarchal training and supervision among native peoples was stopped, and traditional family lifestyles were disrupted when numerous young families were relocated for industrial employment, separated from the support system of elders and extended family. Coupled with the challenges of strong racial prejudices, this resulted in the widespread introduction of alcohol.
The Contemporary First Nations Aboriginal peoples worldwide are banding together and taking a stronger political stance, demanding to be recognized and asserting their rights. A case in point is the heightened attention to global-warming issues among the Inuit Peoples of the United States, Greenland, Chukotka, and the Federation of Russia at the Inuit Circumpolar Conventions. These tribes have seen their winter landscape modified, with an impact on their subsistence and the animal habitat. A Healing Treaty concerning the Aboriginal children who had been sent to boarding schools and were abused is under discussion. The First Nations Education Council is taking a stand against anti-Native racism in the media; casual derogatory comments about Natives have an adverse effect, especially on the youth. Youth suicide is evident throughout the Native communities, prompting the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to commission a study of the reasons for this problem and ways to prevent it. The number of Aboriginals who are prison inmates has increased substantially. More Aboriginal children are becoming offenders, as are Aboriginal women. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has stated that poverty and the lack of educational advancement are contributing factors. As a result of their poverty, for instance, cash-strapped First Nations people have begun selling local tobacco to non-Natives, which
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is illegal. Canada has an extremely high tobacco tax, however, and so the market for under-the-counter tobacco is tempting. Arrests of those involved have increased. Indigenous justice and intervention with cultural significance is still in its infancy. In the late 1970s, Frank Brown became the first teenager of the Heiltsuk tribe in over 20 years to undergo an Aboriginal banishment as an alternative punishment. Brown’s banishment was supported by his Bella Bella tribe. In contrast, some Tlingits opposed the banishment of two Tlingit and Haida youths in the mid-1990s by the Combined Tribal Court of Tlingit Law. For Brown, however, banishment became a life-changing experience, which brought him closer to his culture and made him an asset to his community. From the beginning, treaties have appeared to favor Europeans, leaving the Indigenous Peoples with the sense that the agreements were unfair. In enacting the 2000 Nisga’a Treaty, for instance, the Nisga’a realized only after signing the treaty that it meant relinquishing their “Indian” status and tax exemption in 2012. In response, elders of the Nisga’a Community of Kincolith are challenging this treaty. The government has broken treaties, for example, agreements with the Cree concerning the James I and James II hydroelectric projects. On November 7, 2006, the Snuneymuxw First Nations Thi-Lelum (longhouse), a coalition of chiefs, elders, and other representatives of over forty First Nations, signed an exigent Chief Negotiators Protocol Agreement for negotiating fair treaty agreements. After years of struggling to be recognized, the Constitution Act of 1982 acknowledged the Métis (a mixture of European and Native descents) as their own individual people. There has been a resurgence of tribal identity as the First Peoples culture reemerges through efforts of Native councils, education, and arts, along with Native radio, TV, movies (e.g., The Fast Runner), music, and an increasing Internet presence. Aboriginals are integrating modern technology with traditional integrity and veneration of ancestors in constructing cultural collegial bonds with all First Nations People. Pamela Rae Huteson See Appendix B See also Aleuts; Americanization; Assimilation; American Indian Movement; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Canada; Canada, Aboriginal Women; Hate Crimes, Canada; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Tlingit
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Further Readings
Bandi, Hans-Georg. 1964. Eskimo Prehistory. Translated by A. E. Keep. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press; Seattle: Distributed by the University of Washington. Flannery, Regina. 1939. An Analysis of Coastal Algonquian Culture. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Ives, John W. 1990. A Theory of Northern Athapaskan Prehistory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Keyser, James D. 1992. Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Rushforth, Scott and James S. Chisholm. 1991. Cultural Persistence: Continuity in Meaning and Moral Responsibility among the Bearlake Athapaskans. Tucson: University of Arizona. Stevenson, David S. 1968. Problems of Eskimo Relocation for Industrial Employment: A Preliminary Study. Ottawa, Canada: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Northern Science Research Group.
Web Sites
The Canadian Encyclopedia: http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca National Aboriginal News: http://firstperspective.ca
CANADIAN AMERICANS Canadian Americans are immigrants and their descendants from Canada, a country of 31.9 million, as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, 820,770 people born in Canada were residing in the United States, of whom 46.1% were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration to the United States from Canada, the contemporary picture of Canadian Americans, and the experience of French Canadians in the United States.
Immigration Patterns A certain number of Canadians have always migrated to the United States. Compared with the majority of other immigrants’ experiences, Canadians experience a relatively uncomplicated immigration (as well as remigration), if only due to the proximity of the two nations. With the building of the railways, traveling was simple, and an estimated 2.5 million people made their exodus to the United States between 1850 and the 1890s. It wasn’t until the Great Depression that migration
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slowed, due to lack of economic opportunities in the United States. In fact, many returned to their farms in Canada to wait out the hard times. In addition, crossing the border was fairly simple. For those who traveled back and forth over the border, one typically needed identification that proved citizenship to the United States or Canada; later regulations included verification of identity by way of a photo. For many years, U.S. citizens and Canadians had not been required to present a passport to enter or reenter the United States. The events of September 11, 2001, led to the tightening of border controls between Canada and the United States. The Department of Homeland Security developed the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which has changed the document requirements for those entering the country. More specifically, one now needs to present a passport to enter or reenter the United States.
Contemporary Community Greater job opportunities and higher wages brought an estimated 2.3 million Canadian immigrants to the United States between 1930 and 1980, including welltrained professional workers, skilled craftsmen, laborers, and domestic workers. Since 1980, about 290,000 Canadian immigrants have arrived in the United States. In recent years, people from Canada have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. About 80,000 Canadian Americans became naturalized citizens between 1997 and 2006. Of those Canadian-born present here in 2000, only 18.5% had entered the country prior to 2000. Their median family income was $61,708, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Even tho
