Classic and Modern Assimilation II

1. Classic and Modern Assimilation II • AHD - March 9, 2011

3. Immigration: Nativism and the Modern Era- Connect • What challenges face America THAT ARE DIFFERENT in the ‘modern’ Period?

4. Modern Period: 1960’s - Now • Washington Post: Today: Headline: “More than half of California children Latino, census shows” • More than half the children in California are Latinos, according to new census statistics that show the nation's most populous state rapidly approaching the day when Hispanics overtake whites as the largest minority. • Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/08/AR2011030805866.html • US Census Bureau

5. Modern Period: 1960’s - Now • Until the 1960s the white population had maintained its numerical supremacy with almost 90 percent. • The only significant racial minority group before the 1960s was African American; thus race relations in the United States was synonymous with black-white relations. • In 1997, the non-Hispanic white population dropped to 72 percent, while the Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander populations rose to 11 and 4 percent, respectively. In the population estimate made in March 1997, there was no statistically significant differential between non-Hispanic black (12.6 percent) and Latino (11.1 percent) populations. • According to population projections, the non-Hispanic white population will be reduced to 53 percent in 2050 while the Latino, black, and Asian American populations while the Latino, black, and Asian American populations will grow to 25 percent, 14 percent, and 8 percent, respectively. • The contemporary Third World immigrants are concentrated in several states and metropolitan areas, and much more highly concentrated than turn-of-the-century white immigrants. San Francisco, and Miami. • American cities have grown far more multiracial and multiethnic than they were thirty years ago; they will grow racially and ethnically more diverse in the future. Thus the influx of immigrants in the post-1965 era has made American racial and ethnic relations far more complex than before.

6. Some Theories . . . • Models: • Classics: Assimilation - Assumes all immigrant groups would achieve acculturation, social integration and economic mobility in due time. • Modern: Cultural Pluralism & Ethnicity: • Primordial: Emphasizes pre-immigrant group ties with common cultural markers (religion, language, history and other affinities) • Mobilization: Rejects that ethnicity it determines largely by commonalities and instead views ethnicity as created and re-created in the context of adjustment to the ‘host’ society. Focuses on structural factors (segregation, economic competition, level of discrimination, etc.). • Why does this matter? The theories, I mean . . .

7. Break Out Room Protocol • There will be a single question or image to begin conversation • Every Member will begin Break out by adding a comment in their group’s chat box • That will help jump-start group conversations • When we return to “whole group,” each person will add their own take-away: what struck you them most about the group conversation • This will be done by order of where you appear on the class participant list

8. Breakout 1 What strands of “modern” nativism do you see here?

9. Modern Period: 1960’s - Now • Because of the differences in the structure of economic opportunities, education is far more important for social mobility for the children of contemporary immigrants than for those of turn-of-the-century white immigrants. • At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the United States economy was in its industrial stage, a large number of well paying blue-collar jobs were available to the children of immigrants. Thus many second-generation white ethnics were able to achieve intergenerational mobility without getting a higher education. • However, the deindustrialization process during recent decades has drastically reduced the proportion of manufacturing and particularly unskilled jobs, while creating a large number of high-paying high-tech and professional occupations. • Impact: This means that the highly educated children of contemporary immigrants can achieve a high level of intergenerational mobility within one generation (e.g., from their parents' small business to a computer programmer or a medical doctor) while those with no high school degree do not have an opportunity to find stable jobs. • This is why some sociologists predict that a large segment of the new second generation will experience downward mobility. [NB: Youth Culture/Inner City]

10. Modern Period: 1960’s - Now • There are four major reasons that contemporary immigrants are more likely to transmit their cultural traditions to their descendants over the 1880-1930 waves of immigrants. • First, contemporary immigrants have a higher level of population concentration. The following table shows the differences in settlement patterns between the earlier and contemporary immigrants based on 1910 and 1990 census reports. • Second, Recent immigrants have a greater and easier proximity to Their Home Countries (really, self-explanatory: Russia is farther away (except from some of your front doors). • Third, Recent immigrants have stronger transnational ties (technology) (A 1996 survey in New York revealed that about one-third of Korean immigrants talked to their relatives in Korea at least once a week while half communicated by phone once or twice a month). • Fourth, Multicultural Policy since the Early 1970s. (Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court decision).

11. Comparison

12. Modern Period: 1960’s - Now • The differential levels of concentration of immigrants in particular states and cities. • In 1910, approximately 57 percent of the immigrant population resided in six major immigrant states and 27 percent, in six major immigrant cities. • By contrast, in 1990 nearly three-fourths of the immigrant population was concentrated in the six major immigrant states and the majority of immigrants lived in six major immigrant cities. • Whereas in 1990 four cities had 5 percent or more of the immigrant population, in 1910 only New York and Chicago had such a large proportion of immigrants. Contemporary immigrants' higher level of residential concentration in a smaller number of places impact ethnicity/acculturation. • Contemporary Latino and Caribbean immigrant groups show extremely high levels of concentration in one or a few cities. For example, 70 percent of Guyanese, over 60 percent of Dominicans, 50 percent of Ecuadorians, and 45 percent of Jamaicans who immigrated to the United States between 1982 and 1989 chose New York City as their destination.

13. Break Out Room Protocol • There will be a single question or image to begin conversation • Every Member will begin Break out by adding a comment in their group’s chat box • That will help jump-start group conversations • When we return to “whole group,” each person will add their own take-away: what struck you them most about the group conversation • This will be done by order of where you appear on the class participant list

14. Break Out Room #3 One of Authors writes: “Inequality are unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future. Thus, the descendants of post-1965 immigrants, with the exception of the descendants of white immigrants, will encounter barriers to social mobility and structural assimilation that the descendants of turn-of-the century white immigrants did not experience.” Do you agree? Specifically, based on our readings, what makes you believe that your conclusion is well-supported?

15. Modern Period: 1960’s - Now • Pressures to Assimilate: • First, the media, American peers, and schools currently have a stronger effect on the behavior and attitude of children than at the turn of the century, while immigrant parents have less control over their children than before. • Contemporary immigrant parents may be less effective in preventing their children from being culturally Americanized than the immigrant parents one hun dred years ago, particularly because, as documented in Nancy Foner's article in this special issue, a much larger proportion of contemporary immigrant mothers work full-time outside the home. • Second, the children of today's immigrants have a greater pressure to assimilate to American culture than their counterparts a century ago partly because of the global influence of American popular culture today. • The earlier non-Protestant white immigrant groups lost their cultural traditions quickly, over one generation, while it took them three or four generations to catch up with Protestant ethnic groups in socioeconomic status. However, post-1965 immigrant groups will be more successful than turn-of-the-century European immigrant groups in preserving their language and culture over generations.

16. Nativism . . . • With the increase of immigration from Asia and LatinAmerica, a new American racism has emerged which has no political boundaries or ethnic categorizations. From the left and right of the political spectrum, and from both white and black individuals, this new racism continually threatens to explode in contemporary American society. • Michael Omi and Howard Winant definition of racism as a historically situated project which "creates or reproduces structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race." • What do you think? • How would you (based on readings) define nativism?

17. Nativism . . . • Despite recent exceptions like The Bell Curve, most scientific studies reject the notion that race should be equated with particular hereditary characteristics Instead, social scientists have increasingly explored how race is a social construction, shaped by particular social conditions and historical moments to reflect notions of difference among human groups. • Many academics have subsumed race under other categories deemed more critical to understanding social stratification, such as class or ethnicity. • The other major development in academic discussions is that "race matters" in understanding all forms of social conflicts in the modern world, including those which do not, on the surface, appear to be racially inspired.

18. Nativism . . . • Should be defined: • Intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e., "un-American") connections. • Hostility runs the connecting, energizing force of modern nationalism. While drawing on much broader cultural antipathies and ethnocentric judgments, nativism translates them into a zeal to destroy the enemies of a distinctively American way of life. • Specific nativistic antagonisms may, and do, vary widely in response to the changing character of minority irritants and the shifting conditions of the day but through each separate example these 2 elements run true.

19. Nativism . . . • Historically: • 1. The first was anti-Catholicism, nurtured in Protestant evangelical activism, which deemed Catholics as incapable of the independent thought characterized as critical to American citizenship. • 2. The second major tradition was virulent anti-radicalism, which depicted the foreigner as prone to political revolution and the overthrow of stable institutions. • 3. The third and most important tradition was racial nativism, which was borne out of a confident belief in the Anglo-Saxon origins of the American nation. • This form of romantic nationalism would be transformed in the early twentieth century "into a generalized, ideological structure," most emphatically emerging from the new scientific racism and the eugenics movement. • A kind of an absolute difference between “American” whites and groups of “other colors.” • A profound sense of the decline ofthe American nation.

20. Nativism . . . • Modern: • 1. The first is an extreme antipathy towards non-English languages and a fear of that linguistic difference will undermine the American nation. • Monolinguism and fear . . . • 2. A belief that contrived, misguided, and some times secretive government policies have tilted against white people in the 1990s. • Affirmative Action, etc. • 3. Current anti-immigrant rhetoric focuses on the drain of public resources by immigrants, both legal and illegal, particularly their utilization of welfare, education and health care services. • Unlike nativist calls which center around immigrants taking jobs from citizens, this sentiment feeds into stereotypes of nonworking loafers, particularly targeting women who supposedly come to the United States to give birth and sustain their families from the "generous" American welfare state

21. Nativism . . . • Similarities: • Concern over Changes in Immigrants ' National and Racial Origins. (Classic: “slavic”; modern: Latin America/Caribbean) • Public Opinion. (newcomers “unassimilable”) • Nativist Fears (language, modern: over 20 states declared english the “official’ language) • Violence: • Classic: Beatings and murders of Chinese miners were frequent in the West in the late 1800s, with atrocities in Rock Springs, Wyoming (1885) and Hell's Canyon, Idaho (1887). Violent mob attacks against Greek immigrants took place in Nevada (1908), Utah (1917 and the early 1920s) and, most notably, in South Omaha (1909), where they were beaten and their homes burned. • Modern: little mob-type examples (LA riot) but scapegoat crimes frequent.

22. Nativism . . . • Differences: • Illegal Immigration. today many people fixate on the "illegal alien" as the main part of the "crisis" in immigration policy. • Discriminatory Laws. • Restriction. Modern less successful . . . • United States Position in the World (impact on immigrants and policies) • Two Other New Attitudes: • 1920’s good as they allowed for a “cooling off” period. Same needs to happen today • Surveys show most people are against “high immigration” and so current laws are anti-democratic

23. Break Out Room Protocol • There will be a single question or image to begin conversation • Every Member will begin Break out by adding a comment in their group’s chat box • That will help jump-start group conversations • When we return to “whole group,” each person will add their own take-away: what struck you them most about the group conversation • This will be done by order of where you appear on the class participant list

24. Nativism • “For many Americans in our era, the poor, especially the black poor, have served this role of scapegoat; increasingly, however, that role is being transferred to or combined with the blaming of the immigrant.” • How does that show up for you? • What does it mean, if accurate, • for our teaching of American • history?

25. Nativism . . . • Economics: Collapse of American Cities: • Los Angeles had lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs in the early 1990’s, and each of these jobs were estimated to take another three associated jobs with them. • New jobs that were created were disproportionately low-wage and dead-end forms of employment; in fact, 40 percent of all jobs created in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1989 paid less than $15,000 a year. • Most of these jobs were taken by recent immigrants to the area, leaving African Americans few viable options for secure employment. The average earnings of employed black men fell 24 percent from 1973 to 1989, and unemployment swelled to record levels in the innercity. • Middle-income Los Angeles was rapidly disappearing, leaving little opportunity for anyone to move up the economic ladder. • This inequality was also highly racialized; the median household net worth for Anglos in the city in 1991 was $31,904, while only $1,353 for non-Anglos.

26. Nativism • Rather, what is disturbing about the Los Angeles riots is the insistence that "community" reflects a single racial group. The irony of black protesters stopping construction projects in South Central Los Angeles on the basis that no one from the "community" was employed, even when Latino workers were their neighbors, seemed to be lost on everyone concerned. • In Los Angeles, commentators rarely discuss the longstanding Asian and Latino communities which have been part of the region's history since the city's founding, relying instead on depictions of these racial groups as almost wholly recent immigrants. • In the United States, no less than in Germany or Japan, the power embedded in certain notions of territory must be critiqued and analyzed for the grounds upon which certain peoples and histories are privileged. • Note that this can run in both directions: both from the victimizers and the victims . . .

27. The End • Last Word: Not Mine: • Barbara Jordan’s: • The United States has united immigrants and their descendants around a commitment to democratic ideals and constitutional principles. People from an extraordinary range of ethnic and religious backgrounds have embraced these ideals. . . . We are more than a melting pot; we are a kaleidoscope, where every turn of history refracts new light on the old promise.

28. On the website . . . • Bibliography of all my sources • How did I do this? • Zotero - www.zotero.org • and a quick walk through . . .

29. The End II myopic?