Warren J. Blumenfeld
Associate Professor
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
Iowa State University
wblumen@iastate.edu
Assumptions
 The notion of “race” is discursively or socially
constructed.
 The concept of “race” arose concurrently with the
advent of European exploration as a justification and
rationale for conquest and domination of the globe
beginning in the 15th century of the Common Era.
 “Race” is an historical, “scientific,” and biological
myth. It is an idea.
 Geneticists tell us that there is often more variability
within a given so-called “race” than between “races,”
and that there are no essential genetic markers
linked specifically to “race.”
2010, Arizona: SB 1070
 Mandates police officers stop and question people
about immigration status if they suspect they may be
in this country illegally
 Criminalizes undocumented workers who do not
possess an “alien registration document”
 Allows U.S. citizens to file suits against government
agencies that do not enforce the law
 Criminalizes employers who transport or hire
undocumented workers
Janet Murguia
 President CEO of civil rights organization, National
Council of La Raza,
“By signing it, this bill, Governor Brewer has
thrown the door wide open for racial profiling.”
“Racial Profiling”
 “Racial profiling occurs when race is used by law
enforcement or private security officials, to any degree,
as a basis for criminal suspicion in non-suspect
specific investigations.”
 Racial profiling constitutes a form of discrimination,
based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and
other identities “undermines the basic human rights
and freedoms to which every person is entitled.”
Amnesty International
SB 1070
 “law enforcement official or agency…may not consider
race, color or national origin in implementing the
requirements of this subsection except to the extent
permitted by the United States or Arizona
constitution.”
 But…how can this NOT be a major consideration?
Federal Government & Racial Profiling
 1975, U.S. Supreme Court case regarding the Border
Patrol's power to stop vehicles near the U.S.-Mexico
border & question occupants about citizenship &
immigration status
 United States v. Brignoni-Ponce: the "likelihood that any
given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high
enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor."
 1982, Arizona Supreme Court: State v. Graciano
“enforcement of immigration laws often involves a
relevant consideration of ethnic factors.”
Chin
Simon (Szymon) Mahler
 Maternal grandfather
 Krosno, Poland.
 13 siblings
 Wolf & Basha Mahler
 Butcher shop
Ashkenazi Jewish Tradition
 Child named in
honor of a deceased
relative.
 Wolf Mahler gave me
my name, sense of
history, sense of my
identity.
 My Hebrew name is
Ze'ev, means “wolf.”
Identity
 5 years old
 Family history
 Direct relationship to
German Holocaust
NAZI “RACIAL” PHILOSOPHY
 “Racial” arguments
cornerstone of
persecution of Jews
(as well as most
people of color and
people with
disabilities).
 Jews and others
descendants from
inferior “racial
stands.”
NAZI “RACIAL” PHILOSOPHY
 Nazis asserted Jews
polluting “Aryan race.”
 Jews forced to wear
Yellow Star of David
patches, sign of “race
pollution.”
Mahler’s of Antwerp
 Lilian and Armand
Mahler Bushel forced
to wear yellow star.
Cultural Genocide
& Deculturalization
 Cultural Genocide: the attempt to destroy other
cultures through forced acquiescence and assimilation
to majority rules and standards
 Works through the process of “deculturalization”:
the process of destroying a people’s culture and
replacing it with a new culture
Joel Spring, 2004
2010, Arizona: HB 2281
 Signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer
 Targets public school districts’ ethnic studies programs
 Arizona School Superintendent, Tom Horne, primary
supporter of the bill
 The law is necessary because, in particular, Tucson,
Arizona’s Mexican American, African American, and
Native American studies courses teach students that
they are oppressed, encourages resentment toward
white people, and promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and
“ethnic solidarity” instead of treating people as
individuals
Immigration &
Cultural Genocide in
Historical
Perspective
Colonialism
 Exploitation
 Violence
 Kidnapping
 Genocide
Christopher Columbus & Crew
“Puritans”
 Left England to practice
“Purer” form of Christianity
 Divinely chosen to form “a
biblical commonwealth”
 No separation of “church &
state” (religion &
government)
 Intolerant of other religious
beliefs
 Killed Quakers, Catholics,
others
Slavery
 Scriptural justifications used
to support slavery
 Many slave ships had on
board a Christian minister to
help oversee and bless the
passage.
 Slave ship names included:
“Jesus,” “Grace of God,”
“Angel,” “Liberty,” & “Justice.”
http://propagandapress.org/2006/09/20/the-first-slave-ship-to-land-inamerica-was-called-jesus/
http://www.pleasecomeflying.com/2007/10/lucille-cliftonslaveship.html
Jefferson Davis
“[Slavery] was established by
decree of Almighty God...it is
sanctioned in the Bible, in both
Testaments, from Genesis to
Revelation...it has existed in all
ages, has been found among the
people of the highest civilization,
and in nations of the highest
proficiency in the arts.”
“Manifest Destiny”
 The belief that the United States destined by
Providence to expand from Atlantic to Pacific (from
“sea to shining sea”), & led by so-called “Anglo-Saxon
race.”
 Justified stealing Native American territories
 Justified war with Mexico
“Manifest Destiny”
“The doctrine of ‘manifest destiny’ embraced a belief in
American Anglo-Saxon superiority…. ‘This continent,’ a
congressman declared, ‘was intended by Providence as
a vast theatre on which to work out the grand
experiment of Republican government, under the
auspices of the Anglo-Saxon race’.”
Ronald Takaki, 1993, p. 176
“Race,” Immigration, & Citizenship
14th Amendment, U.S. Constitution
Section 1. 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.
Eugenics Movement
 “Eugenics” movement in science
 18183, coined in England, by
Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of
Charles Darwin
 Greek word meaning “well born”
or “of good origins or breeding”
 “Science” of improving
qualities of a “race” by
controlling human breeding
Sir Francis
Galton
“Race,” Immigration, & Citizenship
 1790, Naturalization Act
 Excluded “nonwhites” from citizenship
 Enslaved Africans
 Asians
 Native Americans (“domestic foreigners”)
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1924, Native Americans rights of citizenship
Asians continued denied naturalized citizenship status
“Race,” Immigration, & Citizenship
 1882, Chinese Exclusion Act
 Also illegal for Chinese to marry Whites or Blacks
 1917, Immigration Act further prohibited
immigration from Asian countries, the “Barred
Zone.”
 China, India, Siam, Burma, Asiatic Russian, Polynesian
Islands, Afghanistan.
Takao Ozawa v United States
 Takao Ozawa, a Japanese man, filed for citizenship under
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Naturalization Act of 1906
Which allowed white persons and persons of African
descent or African nativity to naturalize.
Asians termed an “unassimilateable race” and not entitled
to citizenship.
Ozawa attempted to have Japanese classified as "white.“
Claimed his skin is “white”
1922, Supreme Court
Denied natualized citizenship status.
1896, Plessy v. Ferguson
 Supreme Court Case
 Sustaining racial segregation & “Jim Crow” laws
 Setting precedent: “Separate but Equal”
June 7, 1892, East Louisiana Railroad
Homer Plessy forced off “whites-only”
railroad car & onto “colored” car.
Plessy “one-eights black,”
“seven-eights white”
Blacks Lynched
A Jew Lynched
President Theodore Roosevelt
“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant
who comes here in good faith becomes an American
and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an
exact equality with everyone else….But this is
predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an
American, and nothing but an American….There can be
no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an
American, but something else also, isn’t an American
at all. We have room for but one flag, the American
flag….We have room for but one language here, and
that is the English language…and we have room for but
one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American
people.” 1907
MADISON GRANT
1865-1937
 U.S. Lawyer, Eugenicist
 Co-founder, with Henry Fairfield Osborn,
of the Galton Society for the Study of the
Origin and Evolution of Man, 1918.
 Grant Influential in Immigration
Restriction and Anti-Miscegenation
Policies.
 Book: The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
detailing the so-called “racial” history of
Europe: in fact, a work of “scientific
racism.”
MADISON GRANT
1865-1937
 “Racialization” of European “Races”
The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
 European “Racial” Hierarchy:
 “Nordics” (Northwestern Europe—superior)
 “Alpines” (Central Europe—somewhat inferior)
 “Mediterraneans” (Southern and Eastern
Europe—inferior)
 Jews (most inferior)
1924 Immigration Act
 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act: a.k.a.
“National Origins Quota Act,” or “National Quota Act”
 Restrictive quotas: Eastern & Southern Europe
 Viewed as Europe’s lower “races”
 Jews (“Hebrew race”), Poles, Italians, Greeks, Slaves
 Prohibitions of “aliens ineligible
to citizenship”
(Asians from 1790 Naturalization Act)
 Increased numbers
 Great Britain, Germany
1930s United States
 Great Depression
 High Unemployment
 Homes and farms lost
W.W.II
 Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
 Segregated military units
UNITED STATES
 1939, Congress refused to pass Wagner-Rogers Bill
 Would have permitted entry of 20,000 children,
primarily Jewish, from Eastern Europe over existing
quotas.
“20,000 charming children would, all too soon,
grow into 20,000 ugly adults.”
Laura Delano, cousin of F.D.R.
Japanese American Internment Camps
 120,000 Japanese Americans
 Uprooted from homes
 Transported to Internment Camps
 Interior U.S.
Have we learned anything?
 Following the 9/11 attacks
 31% of U.S.-Americans agreed with the statement:
 “Muslims in the U.S. should be incarcerated like we
incarcerated Japanese Americans during WWII.”
1940s Urban Riots
 Realization German & Italian prisoners of war treated
better than People of Color in U.S.
 People of Color fighting in military but treated poorly
After W.W.II
 Gender Roles rehardened
 Women relinquished jobs
 Mandated nuclear families
 Racial segregation & “Jim Crow” continued
Anti-Miscegenation Laws
 Many states: outlawed interracial sexual relations
 Outlawed interracial marriage
 Example: Mildred Deloris & Richard Loving
 Married in D.C.
 Residents of and lived in Virginia
 Arrested
Judge Leon M. Bazile
“Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, 1924,”
Ruling, Virginia, July 1958,
Richard Perry Loving & Mildred Delores Jeeter
“Almighty God created the races
white, black, yellow, Malay and red,
and He placed them on separate
continents. And but for the
interference with His arrangement
there would be no cause for such
marriages. The fact that He
separated the races shows that He
did not intend for the races to mix.”
1967, Loving v. Virginia
 Supreme Court Decision
 Struck down anti-miscegenation laws in remaining 16
states
1950s - 1960s
 Tumultuous social change
 Challenge underlying assumptions
 Authority
 Power relationships
Civil Rights
 1954, Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas)
 Supreme Court
 Unconstitutional: “Separate but Equal” in public
education
Linda Brown & mother
Linda Brown attending integrated school
Civil Rights
 1955, refusal to give up seat white person
 Montgomery, Alabama
 Municipal bus boycott
Rosa Parks
Civil Rights
Lunch counter sit-in to end segregation
Civil Rights
1963, National March on Washington
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Civil Rights
 Movement to improve working conditions, wages
 Farm Workers
César Chávez
Founder, National Farm Workers
Association
Free Speech Movement
 1964-1965
 Student Protest
 University of California, Berkeley
 Students insisted university lift ban of on-campus
political activities
 Grant students' right free speech
& academic freedom
Vietnam War
Environmental Movement
 Earth Day
 Proposed: U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson
 First, April 22, 1970
 Environmental teach-in
Disability Rights Movement
 The 1952 McCarran Walters Act overturned the 1924
Act.
 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
removed 'natural origins' as the basis of U.S.
immigration legislation, and was framed as an
amendment to the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act.
Immigration and Nationality Act
1965
 Abolished National Origins Formula from
 National Origins of 1924
 Increased immigration from Asian and Latin
American countries and religious backgrounds
 Allowed 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern
Hemisphere, 20,000 per each country
 120,000 from Western Hemisphere
 300,000 total visas allowed
Cultural Pluralism
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Horace Kallen
Jewish immigrant and sociologist
Polish and Latvian heritage
Coined “cultural pluralism” to challenge the image of
the so-called “melting pot,” which he considered to be
inherently undemocratic
 Kallen envisioned a United States in the image of a
great symphony orchestra, not sounding in unison
(the “melting pot”), but rather, one in which all the
disparate cultures play in harmony and retain their
unique and distinctive tones and timbres
Discussion