Teaching immigration
I: Myths of immigration
“The biggest challenge in teaching the history of
immigration and ethnicity, I believe, is to help
students to understand the relationship of popular
myths about the immigrant experience to the
actual experience of immigrants in American
society.”
- Gary Gerstle, leading forum on teaching immigration (on
“History Matters” site, 1999)
II: Going beyond Ellis Island
Asian
immigration in 19th century; Angel
Island, Chinese and Japanese exclusion
Mexican immigration in 19th/20th c
French-Canadian immigration
Puerto Rican migration
Immigration since 1965
III: Understanding
Americanization
Metaphors: The Uprooted [Oscar Handlin,
1951]
The Transplanted [John Bodnar, 1985]
melting pot
salad bowl
mosaic
stew
‘Official’ Americanization
Schools,
settlement houses, local
gov’t campaigns
Intensified and became more
coercive during WWI
Many
immigrants did not wish to become
“Americanized”
Did not find process quick, easy, and
liberatory; often alienating and disturbing
Did not become undifferentiated
“Americans”
Resisting
Americanization:
- Italian immigrants and others resisted
sending children to school
- Catholic immigrants staying away from
Irish-dominated churches
- avoiding settlement houses, etc.
- As much as a third of new immigrants did
not become citizens; many intended to
return
On their own terms
Immigrants
and children flocked to movie
theatres, amusement parks, etc. Often
blended Old World and New World
cultures (I.e., Yiddish theatre, early movie
theatres, etc).
Americanized “on their own terms,”
blending ethnic and American identities,
using institutions they created
IV: Comparing immigrant groups
or waves
18th
and 19th century immigrants
“new” immigrants of 1880-1920
period
Post-1965 immigrants from Latin
America, Caribbean, Asia
Immigration and race
 New
immigrants of 1880-1920 period as “inbetween peoples”: seen as distinct races, though
considered white for naturalization purposes
Slav, Hebrew, Iberic, Mediterranean seen as low
on the racial hierarchy, “wretched refuse”
Who is “white”?
 “The
number of purely white People in the World is
proportionately very small...In Europe, the Spaniards,
Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes are generally of
what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans
also, the Saxons only excepted, who, with the English,
make the principal body of white people on the face of
the earth.”
Benjamin
Franklin, 1751
Histories of “whiteness”
2005
1991
1998
“White, but not our kind of
white”
 Lynching
of Italian immigrants in New Orleans,
1891; Greeks vicitmized by whites in Omaha riot,
1909
 Greek and Italian immigrants seen as “nonwhite” in
western mining areas; in MN’s Iron Range, Greeks,
Serbs, South Italians, and Croatians were “black”
 Italians assigned to black schools in some southern
educational systems
 “Only hunkies” work blast furnace jobs “too damn
dirty and too damn hot for a white man.”
1995
1998
Do
Latinos and Asians today “pursue
whiteness”?
How do black immigrants today
respond to racial dynamics in U.S.?
V: Immigration policy
1790:
free white men eligible for
citizenship
Pro-immigrant consensus prevailed
through 1860s
Immigration policy
Chinese
Exclusion Act, 1882 - beginning of
immigration restriction
Japanese “Gentlemen’s Agreement”
1921 and 1924 immigration restriction
McCarran-Walter Immigration Act 1952
Immigration and Nationality Act 1965 repealed quota system