Psychology of Race & Ethnicity

1. Psychology of Race & Ethnicity History of Race and Race Relations in the U.S.

2. The New “Racial” World • 1607 Jamestown founded in Virginia (1st permanent European settlement) • Conditions in colonies very difficult, relations with local Indians strained • John Smith captured by Chief Powhatan’s half brother • 1607 Pocahontas (originally Matoaka) “saves” Smith • 1614 John Rolfe marries Pocahontas (“Rebecca”) temporary improving of relations with Indians • 1619 Twenty African “servants” purchased from Dutch • 1675 Indians raid Mathews plantation to recover debt • 1676 war declared on all hostile Indians A 1616 engraving of Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe, the only portrait of Pocahontas made within her lifetime. The inscription around the picture translates as "Matoaka, also known as 'Rebecca', daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of Virginia". The inscription under the portrait means "at the age of 21 in the year 1616".

3. The “Pilgrims” of Plymouth Colony • Disembarked from Mayflower Dec 21, 1620 in area previously explored by Captain John Smith • John Carver, 1st Governor. William Bradford takes over in 1621 • Food scarce, disease rampant. Half of the colony died in first winter. • Beneficiaries of a plague (probably smallpox) that wiped out 90% of Indian population • Tisquantum (Squanto) and Samoset • Formed peaceful relations with local Indians, especially the Wampanoag Tribe (Chief Massasoit) • King Philip’s War: 1675-1676 "The Landing of the Pilgrims."(1877) by Henry A. Bacon. King Philip, by Paul Revere (1772)

4. Optional Thanksgiving Slides

5. Common myths about the Plymouth Colonysee http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~lyubansk/race/thanks.htm • Myth 1:  The Mayflower was filled by Puritans, who wanted to purify the church of England and who were seeking religious freedom. • Myth 2a: The Pilgrims discovered unoccupied wilderness, which with hard work, they cleared and settled Myth 2b (this one is more recent): The Pilgrims stole the land for their Colony from the Indians, and mistreated them • Myth 3:  The "first" Thanksgiving in 1621 was the first such celebration • Myth 4: The first Thanksgiving was called "Thanksgiving" • Myth 5:  The Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving every year. • Myth 6 : The Mayflower passengers always wore black and white clothes, without any color, and had big buckles. (see last optional slide)

6. Thanksgiving: Two historical accounts • William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation: “They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their house and dwelling against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned by true reports.” • Edward Winslow, in Mourt's Relation: “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

7. History of Thanksgiving • 1789: President Washington proclaims a National Thanksgiving in honor of military victory and the adoption of the Constitution. • 1863: President Lincoln proclaims a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863: “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.…It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

8. Buckle down, Americans

9. End of optional section

10. Slavery • Atlantic slave trade started in early to mid 1500s • By 1670s, slavery was a legal, racially-based institution throughout much of the New World • Enslaving indigenous people failed • All slaves were Black • Was not primarily a U.S. institution (animation) • 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World (20,528 voyages) • 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage (15% mortality rate) • Portugal, England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, Brazil, and the Caribbean islands all participated in the slave trade • Only 388,000 shipped directly to North America • Some scholars estimate another 60-70,000 ended up in U.S. after touching down in the Caribbean Slave ship from Thomas Clarkson's 1786 "Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of Human Species Note: Data taken from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Database

11. Slavery (cont.) • Slavery legal in all colonies until the revolution • After revolution, some states wrote constitutions that eliminated slavery • U.S. Constitution (1787) originally limited Federal government from interfering with slavery or slave trade • Conditions of slavery • Chattel slavery different • Conditions differed according to master’s whims • A considerable investment: $1000 translates to a current value of $38,000/slave • Slave trade prohibited in U.S. in 1808 (film clip) • Emancipation Proclamation 1863 (4 mil. freed) • Slavery in U.S. abolished in 1865 Baton Rouge, La., 2 April, 1863: "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer.” The words of Peter, taken as he sat for his picture.

12. Dred Scott Case (1857) • Scott, a slave owned by Emerson, sued owner’s family for battery and wrongful imprisonment in the territory of Missouri. • Lower Missouri court rules for Scott • Missouri Supreme Court overturns • Two questions for the U.S. Supreme Court: • Does it have jurisdiction? • If “yes” was earlier judgment in error?

13. Dred Scott Decision (1857) • Regarding jurisdiction: • The drafters of the Constitution had viewed all African-Americans as "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."(Chief Justice Taney) • "It would give to persons of the negro race, ... the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ... the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."(Chief Justice Taney)

14. Dred Scott Decision (1857) • Regarding the dispute, the court ruled that Scott was not a free man on the grounds that: • The Fifth Amendment barred any law that would deprive a slaveholder of his property (i.e., his slaves) upon entering a territory “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”(5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) • Territorial legislatures had no power to bar slavery.

15. Dred Scott impact • Impact of 7-2 ruling profound • Taney thought it would end the “slavery” question once and for all • Actually created more opposition in North, gave rise to new Republicans “Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. [...] We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.” (Abraham Lincoln, 1857) “Mr. Lincoln goes for a warfare upon the Supreme Court of the United States, because of their judicial decision in the Dred Scott case. I yield obedience to the decisions in that court—to the final determination of the highest judicial tribunal known to our constitution.” (Stephen Douglas, 1857)

16. The American Civil War (1861-1865) • Abraham Lincoln campaigned in 1860 against the expansion of slavery beyond states where it already existed. • Seven Southern States declared their secession before Lincoln took office in March, 1861 • Emancipation Proclamation 1862/1863 • Freed all slaves in every state of the Confederacy • Did not free slaves in border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia) • Represented a shift in the war objectives of the North (reuniting nation no longer only goal) • Had little immediate impact • Represented a major step toward ultimate abolition of slavery (4 mil. Eventually freed) • Slavery officially abolished in 1865 (13th ammendment)

17. Question for U.S. Society: What do we do with Blacks? After the Civil War… • Six different alternatives (used at different times/places) • Create a legal system of equity to replace slavery • Maintain racial hierarchy (Black codes) • Create “Equal” Segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) • Raise up the downtrodden (White men’s burden) • Keep them or move them out (eugenics, restrictive immigration, 1913-1965) • Assimilate into the mainstream (Brown v. Board of Ed., 1954) • Pluralism and Multiculturalism

18. Legal Equity • 13th Amendment (1865): Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. • Many other new “rights” • hold office • attend school • New Orleans, a model of integration. • desegregated its streetcars in 1867 • began experimenting with integrated public schools in 1869 • legalized interracial marriage between 1868 and 1896 • elected a total of 32 black state senators and 95 state representatives, and had integrated juries, public boards, and police departments

19. A racial hierarchy in the South To dissuade congressional action, suffrage opponents organized a popular referendum among the city's white voters in December 1865. Nearly 7,000 ballots were cast against black voting rights, with only 35 in favor. This Harper's Weekly cartoon, originally published February 24, 1866, depicts the racial prejudice that underlay the rejection of black manhood suffrage in Washington, D. C.

20. Legal Equity (cont.) 14th Amendment (1868): All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 15th Amendment (1870): The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

21. A racial hierarchy in the South • Southern states forced by Martial Law to ratify 13th amendment (and 14th) to be part of Union • During “Reconstruction” Federal Gov. protects civil rights • Civil Rights Act of 1875 • Reconstruction ends in 1877, civil rights deconstruction begins • "Black Codes" • placed taxes on nonagricultural professions • restricted ability of blacks to rent land or own guns • allowed children of "unfit" parents to be apprenticed to the old slave masters • Illegalized inter-racial marriage • Legislated institutional segregation • Ku Klux Klan forms (in 1866) to protect white women and white property

22. “Equal” segregation: Plessy v. Ferguson(1896) • The facts: Homer Plessy (30-year-old shoemaker) jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, but considered Black under Louisiana law • Question before court: Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?

23. Plessy v. Ferguson Decision (1896) "That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery...is too clear for argument...A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.” (Justice Henry Brown, for the majority) "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficient purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution. (Justice John Harlan,lone dissenter)

24. The “Liberal” Response: White Man’s Burden Take up the White Man's burden —Send forth the best ye breed — Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild — Your new-caught sullen peoples,Half devil and half child. (Stanzas omitted…) Take up the White Man's burden--The savage wars of peace--Fill full the mouth of FamineAnd bid the sickness cease;And when your goal is nearestThe end for others sought,Watch sloth and heathen FollyBring all your hopes to nought. (Rudyard Kipling, 1899) link to entire poem

25. The “Liberal” Response: White Man’s Burden http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/schooling_the_world_2010/ link to entire poem

26. A more progressive (but less mainstream voice of the time: Mark Twain (on Imperialism) “I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific ...Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? ... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves. But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris [which ended the Spanish-American War], and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” (from the New York Herald, October 15, 1900)

27. Scientific Racism: The foundation A.  The foundation of the eugenics movement • Thomas Malthus: Principle of Population (1798) • Populations increase geometrically while food supply only arithmetically • European rulers began to see masses as liabilities instead of assets • Charles Darwin: Origin of Species by way of Natural Selection (1859) • Evolutionary transformation of one species into another (Lamarck) • Natural selection: traits that increase reproductive success are selected • Drive behind evolution is the sexual reproduction instinct

28. Scientific Racism: Birth of Eugenics 2.  What to do with surplus populations? • Move them out • The age of imperialism (see next slide) • "Lebensraum" (living space), popular German slogan in 1871 • Put them to work (servitude, serfdom, prison labor) • Breed them out (racial purification or eugenics) • Eugenics founded by Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin) (1869-1889) • Herbert Spencer coined "survival of fittest" (1870); believed many were unfit • Adolf Jost: The Right to Death (1895):   solution to population problem: state control over human reproduction

29. Scientific Racism: Intelligence Tests • The new science of intelligence testing • Alfred Binet (1904) -- 1st IQ test • Henry Goddard (1908) -- eugenicist; translated Simon-Binet • 1912 book The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness • Wanted to prevent the breeding of feebleminded people • Hesitated to promote compulsory sterilization, even though convinced it would solve problem • Suggested "colonies" where the feeble-minded could be segregated

30. IQ Tests and Immigration • Intelligence testing program on Ellis Island established in 1913 1.  Rejected 80% of immigrants as "feeble-minded" • 83% of all Jews • 80% of the Hungarians • 79% of the Italians • 87% of the Russians.   2.  Resulted in an exponential increase in deportations       3.  Served as foundation for the Immigration Restriction Act (1924-1965)  • strongly influenced by American eugenics' efforts • restricted numbers of immigrants from undesirable racial groups (including Jews)  • upon signing, President Coolidge commented, "America must remain American."  • publicized race-group differences on Army IQ tests and claimed Americans were unfit for Democracy

31. Internment of Japanese Americans • Forced relocation and incarceration in the western interior of the country of 110,000 -- 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry • 62% US citizens, included as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" • Shaped by population concentrations and local politics. Thus, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. • US Census Bureau denied its role for decades but in 2007 government documents confirmed that the Bureau assisted in the efforts • The US military recruited in the camps and about 20,000 Japanese Americans served during WWII

32. Internment of Japanese Americans • Considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans • Roberts Commission Report made no mention of Americans of Japanese ancestry • “The fact that nothing has happened so far is more or less . . . ominous, in that I feel that in view of the fact that we have had no sporadic attempts at sabotage that there is a control being exercised and when we have it, it will be on a mass basis.” Lieutenant General John DeWitt (administrator of the internment program) • “I don't want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.” • Legal legacy

33. Brown v. Board of Education • The NAACP (on behalf of Brown) argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites; thus, the schools were inherently unequal. "...if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children must live, then the colored child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation.” (Expert witness, Dr. Hugh W. Speer) • The Board of Education's defense was • Segregated schools simply prepared black children for the real world • Segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to black children (see Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver) • The Supreme Court was unanimous in its decision: "We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”(Chief Justice, Earl Warren, 1954)

34. Segregation continued… "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.“ (Governor of Alabama George Wallace, Inaugural address, Jan. 14, 1963)

35. Assimilation • Began with Brown v. Board of Ed. (1954) • Promised economic opportunity • Based on immigration model • Typically works over two or more generations • Sometimes voluntary, often forced • Somewhat successful but discrimination still exists (not everyone allowed to assimilate • African American exclusion leads to separatist counter-movement • Rise of Black Nationalism (e.g., Black Panthers) • Civil Rights Movement vs Black Power

36. Pluralism • The hyphenated-American • Two realms • Private, familial, and cultural • Public (national identity) • Limited opportunity for public expression of racial identity • Often viewed as half-way station to assimilation • Racial/Ethnic identity watered down, languages and cultural traditions are lost because they are not valued or taught

37. Multiculturalism (1980s) • Ethnicity and diversity become the “in-thing” • Salad bowl metaphor invented • “Assimilation” equated with uniformity and seen as negative • Multicultural curricula emphasizes history and traditions of many • May undermine shared national identity • Only moderately successful • Assimilation (i.e., color-blindness) • Discrimination and Racism