Whiteness and the Shifting Roads of Immigrant America, 1780s-1960s - PowerPoint Presentation

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Whiteness and the Shifting Roads of Immigrant America, 1780s-1960s

UNEVEN ROADS, CHAPTER 6Slide2

Chapter Objectives

Explain the racial considerations incorporated into the nation’s founding documents and the motivations behind them

Identify how societal factors and government practices shaped options for new populations arriving from Europe and challenged the conception of Whiteness

Explain how White identity expanded to include White ethnics by the dawn of the Civil Rights era

Discuss the ways in which government created long-term advantages for Whites not available to other races in U.S. societySlide3

Whiteness and the Study of U.S. Race/Ethnicity

Position of racial/ethnic minorities in U.S. society can only be understood by assessing their position relative to White Americans

Popular definitions of government policies defining Whiteness have changed over time

Benjamin Franklin (1751) – “ Instead of learning our language, we must learn theirs, or live as in a foreign country. Already the English begin to quit particular neighborhoods surrounded by Dutch, being made uneasy by the disagreeableness of dissonant manners …”

Madison Grant (1918) – migrants from the Mediterranean and Baltic countries: “contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled … Our jails, insane asylums and almshouses filled with the human flotsam and the whole tone of American life, social, moral and political has been lowered by them.”Slide4

Whiteness at the American Founding

The U.S. Constitution

Article One, Section 2 – “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed,

three fifths of all other Persons

.”

Article One, Section 8 – “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

Article One, Section 9 – Prohibited restrictions on slave importation until 1808

Article Four, Section 2 – Fugitive slave clause – required that all states enforce the rights of slave holders

Early national law

Naturalization Act of 1790 – Naturalization limited to “free white persons” (free white males)Slide5

Expansions of White Identity

New European migrants 1830s

Countries of origin diversified

Roman Catholics and Jews joined Protestants in migration steam

Initially viewed as non-White or less than White – “in-between” peoples

European migration further diversified after Civil War to include migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe

Transitions to Whiteness

State and local acceptance

Numbers

Federalism

Scientific racism (see chapter 1)

Efforts to privilege and privilege the practices of Northern/Western Europeans relative to Southern/Eastern Europeans (Prohibition as example)

Southern/Eastern European migrants and their descendants organized to demand equal rights and protectionsSlide6

Cross Road: General Grant’s Expulsion of Jews “as a Class”

General Orders #11 – Expulsion of all Jews from the military district of Tennessee

Origins unclear

May have tapped anti-Semitism and perceptions of Jews as profiteers

Jews in the district mobilized to have the orders reversed … and succeeded

Tapped the principle that individual liberty extended to all Whites

And that all Whites should have their rights respected as individuals

Had the orders stood, they would have established a precedent that Jews as a group (and, by extension, other Whites) could have had their rights denied as a group

Grant appears to have regretted the order

Appointed a record number of Jews to public office

Opposed “religious” amendment to Constitution

Earned a high share of the Jewish vote in 1872Slide7

White Identity at the Dawn of the Civil Rights Era

Low levels of new European migration, 1920s-1960s

Political organization, local then national, among immigrants/descendants of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe

The Depression reduced class differences between Whites of different immigration origins/histories

Decline in new European immigration led to greater social contact and higher rates of intermarriage among Whites of different immigration origins/histories

Post-World War II economy allowed for “non-zero-sum mobility” for white ethnics

All

were necessary pre-conditions for White identity to coalesce in the mid-twentieth CenturySlide8

Road Sign: Not White Enough for the White House?

In 2012, three of the four party nominees for President and Vice President where not mainstream Protestants

The one who is a mainstream Protestant was African American

Religion not a central theme in the campaign

Not the case in 1928 when a party nominated the first non-Protestant – New York Governor Al Smith (D)

Until 1928, all nominees for President and Vice President were Protestants

Most had been of British ancestry, with a few of Dutch ancestry

Smith

Catholic

Irish ancestry

Ancestors part of the “First Great Wave” –1820s-1840sSlide9

Road Sign, continued

Smith opposed Prohibition

Issue divided White electorate

Costs of prohibition becoming evident by 1928

Smith’s religion central to race

Asserted that he would govern at the behest of the Pope

Success (and independence) as Governor of New York insufficient to quell prejudice

Smith lost

Religion returned to debate when John Kennedy ran for and won the U.S. Presidency in 1960 and when Mitt Romney (a Mormon) ran for President in 2008 and 2012

President Obama was the only mainstream Protestant among 2012 party nominees for President or Vice President

But, first descendant of a post-Civil War migrant to win the Presidency

The Second Great Wave of U.S. immigration (1960s-1920s) has yet to see a descendant win the PresidencySlide10

The State and White Advantage

White advantage – the social, economic, and legal privileges that Whites could exercise or exercise more freely than non-Whites

Colonies / early United States devalues and destroyed the assets of non-Whites to the advantage of European colonists

Native lands expropriated

Blacks transition from indentured servitude to slavery

Citizenship denied

Early national era

Constitution entrenches racial hierarchy

Naturalization (a federal power) extended only to Whites

States reinforced White advantage

Voting rights expand from landholders to most adult males (including Blacks in some states)

Ensures that immigrants and their children gain the franchise and local political powerSlide11

White Privilege in Westward Expansion

Lands in West progressively taken from Native populations

Homestead Act of 1862

Land sold in small plots to ensure its productive use

Few non-Whites had the resources to migrate and farm the land for five years to gain ownership

Blacks faced added burden of “anti-vagrancy” laws

Southern lands that were made available (where most Blacks lived) or low quality

Homestead Act transferred 285 million acres / 10 percent of U.S. land mass

Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862

Land made available in each state to build state colleges

Blacks (and later Mexican Americans and Asian Americans) often denied equal access to admissions

Plessy v Ferguson

(1896) formally established “separate but equal”

Real estate covenants –

Corrigan v. Buckley

(1926)

Each policy explains contemporary racial/ethnic wealth gapsSlide12

Immigration Policy Reinforces Racial Hierarchy

Until 1875, popular understanding was that immigration could not be restricted (naturalization could be)

Restrictions, as they are enacted, include racial bars

Page Act 1875 – notion of “consent”

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) – Chinese laborers

Expansion to all Asians (1882-1917)

The Illiterate (1917) – not applied evenly, excluded many Southern and Eastern Europeans and Mexicans

National Origin Quotas (1921 & 1924) – Southern and Eastern Europeans (see chapter 11)Slide13

White Privilege and the Emergence of the National Welfare State

New Deal programs

To pass, President Roosevelt needed the support of Southern Democrats in Congress

As a result, they systematically excluded African Americans or offered them less access to state resources

Social Security initially excluded the industries that overwhelmingly employed African Americans and Mexican Americans

L

ower benefits today

Partial explanation for the racial/ethnic wealth gap today

The G.I. Bill

Educational discrimination ensure that non-White veterans less able to seize full benefits of education financing

Redlining / “racial homogeneity” principles limited non-White veteran access to the U.S. housing market (and subsequent appreciation in home prices)

These policies served for further homogenize White ethnic identity and reduce social, educational, and wealth differences among Whites of different ancestriesSlide14

Conclusions

Racial hierarchy – with White ethnic identity largely unquestioned – in place as Civil Rights debates emerge

Lyndon Johnson speech at Howard University (1965)

Growing gaps between Whites and Blacks

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to complete with all the others,’ and justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Policy responses

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Affirmative action policies

Across U.S. history, racial differences

within

the White population insufficient or inconsequential as barriers for Whites to exercise the rights and privileges of citizenship