Complicating Questions of Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration

1. Part III
Complicating Questions of Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and
Immigration

2. Immigration in the United States: New
Economic, Social, Political Landscapes
with Legislative Reform on the Horizon
• Authors name four peak periods of immigration that coincided with American economic
transformation
• “Peopling of the original colonies” as the first of the four peak periods of immigration,
coinciding with European settlement.
• Next, westward expansion in the middle of the 19th century coincided with the U.S.
transition from a colonial towards an agricultural economy.
• The third period is at the turn of the 20th century, when the rise of migration into cities
coincided with the U.S. transition into a manufacturing economy post-industrial revolution.
• Finally, the fourth peak period of immigration has been in the 1970s onward, as
globalization has transitioned the U.S. into a knowledge-based economy.

3. Immigration in the United States: New
Economic, Social, Political Landscapes
with Legislative Reform on the Horizon
• Immigration Act (1882)
• First federal effort to regulate immigration through collection of fees from noncitizens upon arrival and screening of immigrants to prevent entry
of people deemed a “convict, lunatic, idiot, or person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.”
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
• Prevented the immigration of Chinese laborers, barred Chinese naturalization and facilitated deportation.
• 1888 Scott Act and the 1892 Geary Act extended these restrictions on Chinese immigration.
• 1917 Immigration Act
• Prohibited immigration from an “Asiatic barred zone” which included India, Southeast Asia and most of the Middle East, as well as prohibited
immigration by “anarchists, persons previously deported within the past year, and illiterate individuals over the age of 16.”
• Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924
• created a national-origins quota system, which limited the number of immigrants that could be admitted to the United States from each country.
• The quotas strongly favored northern and western European immigration.
• The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act continued the quota system but allowed an immigration quota for Asian countries for the
first time.

4. Immigration in the United States: New
Economic, Social, Political Landscapes
with Legislative Reform on the Horizon
• Undocumented immigrants enter the United States via a variety of methods, including
• Crossing the land border between formal entry points
• Using fraudulent documents at a port of entry
• Overstaying a valid but temporary visa.
• Illegal immigration increases when the economy is strong and there is high demand for low-
skilled labor
• Such as we saw in the 1990s to the early 2000s
• And slows down during periods of economic contraction
• For example, in the years since the recession that began in late 2007

5. Immigration in the United States: New
Economic, Social, Political Landscapes with
Legislative Reform on the Horizon
• Immigrant integration is commonly assessed by comparing measures such as income,
education, health, and living standards for native-born and foreign-born populations.
• During the recession, job demand for lower-skilled workers in industries like
construction, hospitality, and tourism, decreased.
• Immigration enforcement in the United States has increased.
• Structural changes in Mexico, such as economic growth, higher rates of high school
graduation, and a decline in the size and growth of the working-age population have
improved economic conditions in Mexico, so that fewer people have been immigrating
to the United States.

6. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the
Making of America
• Why is it important to focus on immigrant narratives like the story of Rosario
Hernandez?
• Ngai notes that legal reformers focus on these stories to call attention to the
problem in American immigration policy.
• “Reformers argued that the nation’s sovereign right to determine the
conditions under which foreigners enter and remain in the country runs into
trouble when the government expels people who have acquired families and
property in the United States.”

7. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the
Making of America
• What is the societal impact of ethno-racial communities for undocumented
immigrants?
• Ngai suggests that, on the one hand,
• the “presence of large illegal populations in Asian and Latino communities has historically
contributed in the construction of those communities as illegitimate, criminal, and
unassimilable.”
• On the other hand, “ethno-racial minority groups pursue social inclusion, making claims of
belonging and engaging with society, irrespective of formal status.”

8. For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More
Culture than Color
• The category of race, Navarro suggests, has less relevance than ethnicity (commonalities in language,
customs, cultural traits), making it difficult for Latinos to pick a race when filling out census forms.
• As Navarro notes, the information on race collected by the Census Bureau “serves many purposes,
including
• determining the makeup of voting districts, and monitoring discriminatory practices in hiring and racial disparities
in education and health.” If a respondent does not choose a racial category, the Census Bureau assigns them a race
based on neighborhood demographics.
• How Latinos identity themselves (and how they are identified by the census) affects” political clout.”
• For example, some studies have found that Afro-Latino people “tend to be more supportive of government-
sponsored health care and much less supportive of the death penalty than Latinos who identify as white
• A rift that is also found in the broader white and black populations.”
• This racial difference “weakens the political effectiveness of Latinos as a group,” according to Segura.

9. Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the
Pursuit of the American Dream
• The overt caste system in which white power subjugates people of color into slave and
indentured servant positions no longer exists.
• Greer states that the new system is in the “mind-sets of those who were once held in
subservient positions” and even new immigrants to the United States strive to “position
themselves as far from the ‘bottom’ caste as possible.”
• Foreign-born blacks are both affected by the historical racism and oppression that black
Americans face (for example, residential segregation) and treated as different, better, hard-
working, smarter—that is, as “good blacks.”
• Forced integration of native-born and foreign-born blacks also produces tension, mistrust,
and competition among black groups.

10. Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the
Pursuit of the American Dream
• Black immigrants sometimes described as invisible immigrants because they are often folded
in with black Americans as part of one racial group, and not compared, for example, to
other immigrant groups.
• Greer names many challenges to black racial alliances across African American and
immigrant groups, including:
• Intraracial tensions, in-group superiorities, ethnocentrism, and overall group tensions due to
limited access to larger political and economic goals.
• On the other hand, she also notes that a black racial alliance is enabled by these structures of
competition and striving to avoid “anything but last place in the social order” because they
create a bond based on an understanding of the meaning of blackness and the occurrence
of structural racism.
•

11. The Myth of the Model Minority
• Despite the challenges various populations from Asian countries face in immigrating to the United
States, there is a persistent myth that they will do well because in the United States “because of their
strong ‘family values’ and work ethic.”
• This notion becomes a measure for “what all minorities need in order to get ahead.”
• The negative impact the myth of the model minority has had on Latinos and African Americans in
the United States has been through a conservative perception that distorts the “values” of these
communities.
• Thrupkaew states: “Because Asian Americans’ success stems from their strong families and their
dedication to education and hard work, conservatives say, then the poverty of Latinos and African
Americans must be explained by their own ‘values’: They are poor because of their nonmarrying,
school-skipping, and generally lazy and irresponsible behavior, which government handouts only
encourage.”

12. The Myth of the Model Minority
• According to Thrupkaew, have Asian American organizations and communities fought
against the model minority myth?
• Activists have promoted interracial and interethnic efforts.
• For example, the creation of SEARAC, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center is a pan-Southeast
Asian advocacy group that draws attention to the ways that Southeast refugees are suffering under
public policies and protests against this—“by pushing for research on their communities, advocating
for their rights, and harnessing their political power.”
• Another example is the alliance made between a Vietnamese-serving organization and a youth center
for Latinos, as described by the Executive Director: “People who are empowered in this country like
to play us off each other, like with the model-minority myth. They need the poor and disadvantaged
to fight each other. Because if we unite, we can make it difficult for them.”

13. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
• The dubious distinction that Arabs and Muslims hold is that they are the first
“communities of suspicion” after the civil rights era to face the question of
whether American society will treat them as equals.
• Islam has been in the United States as far back as colonial times.
• Many West African Muslims were sold into slavery, “making Muslim-
American history older than the republic itself.”

14. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
• In Hassan’s case, the court decided that Arabs were not “white persons,” and
on that basis, denied his naturalization case.
• In Mohriez’s case, the court changed its mind, citing that it was in the “vital
interest [of the United States] as a world power” to have friendlier
relationships with other countries; treating “all men as created equal” was
important to this goal.
• This shows us how ideas of race and racial classification are socially and
politically constructed

15. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
• Some of the changes that affected Arab Americans in the late 1960s include
• changes in immigration policy in 1965 that eliminated national origin quotas
that had favored European immigration, which allowed the Arab community
to grow;
• the civil rights movement; and the United States’s involvement in the Arab-
Israeli War, which made it so that U.S. foreign policy and its role in the Middle
East (and not domestic ethnic/racial hierarchies) would “define the
parameters of Arab American life.”

16. New York Times op-docs series, “The Conversation: A
Series of Short Films About Race in America”
• https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004237305/a-conversation-with-
latinos-on-race.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000003773643/a-conversation-with-
white-people-on-race.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004050379/a-conversation-with-
black-women-on-race.html
• What shapes the speakers’ racial and ethnic identities?
• How do you see yourselves?