Jesse Lopez. Immigration and History HST 325.
Project Paper: Racial American Immigration
Immigration policies in America have been shaped by racial attributes. Whiteness has been at the heart of a complex and ever-changing immigration policy to date, to the extent that entire races have been excluded from entering the United States and its borders. This paper will make the argument and proving that racial based immigration policies are ill-founded and have done more harm than good to the growth of America.
The shaping of America can be traced as back as 1492 when European colonist first began settling in the “New World” but America as a nation could be defined after the Revolution was won in 1776. Argument could be made that America first gained borders after the treaty of Paris in 1783 but what it is important at this stage is that English man were the majority of people who settled in America along with small groups of French, German, Dutch, and Irish man. The reason this is important is that this group of people in its entirety was white and who inevitably would shape America and is racially biased immigration policies.
Before the Revolution was won, America needed people to begin to populate and work the vast fields. 1619 is the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade and that would end in 1808. Although domestic slave trade would
…show more content…
In the picture, he introduces the reader with the headline of the miseries that his countrymen encountered at the hands of the white man in the slave trade. Equiano his story of his kidnapping at age 11 in Africa until he bought his freedom in 1776 and subsequently leading him to become an abolitionist. Equiano’s story is only one of the roughly 12 to 13 million enslaved people that the European man would directly affect the Atlantic Slave trade during its 245-year
Equiano questions the slave owners with rhetorical questions so they think about what they are doing to slaves. He is also asking for equal rights that are eventually reached so an African American can be a
Everyday the future in America looks brighter for the issues dealing with race and identity. Brave souls are not letting racism, class discrimination, or sexism hold them back anymore. Furthermore, the fight for a balanced society that pushes for equality is on the horizon. As we close on an era, based on purely the skin of the person, we need to analyze the impacts of the Ethnicity paradigm and Class paradigm on politics of the 20th century. Race and Ethnicity are used interchangeable in everyday conversation, however; they are not the same.
In Equiano's personal slave narrative, "The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African", Equiano flips the idea that the African people are backwards and barbaric, thus ripe for slavery, by demonstrating his personal exceptionalism through his literacy to show that it is truly the white people who are backwards and barbaric through their own hypocrisy. This reversal that Equiano demonstrates in his slave narrative shows that the savagery of African people exists as a misconception and makes the reader fully grasp the need to abolish slavery and any inequality present. On page seventy-eight, Equiano uses first person pronouns like 'I', 'my', and 'me' to separate himself from the other African people and whites around him. This separation that Equiano creates demonstrates his exceptionalism as an African slave.
In their work, both George J. Sanchez and Kelly Lytle Hernandez discuss race as well as the black-white paradigm in which Latinos do not have a solid place. In Race, Nation, and Culture in Recent Immigration Studies, Sanchez argues that the future of immigration history depends on the field’s ability to incorporate insights of race, nation, and culture that develop. Meanwhile, in Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol, Lytle Hernandez discusses how the border is controlled, race, and the racialization of migration control. They both cite past immigration laws in their work and discuss the experiences of whites, blacks, and Mexicans in the United States.
After serving in numerous battels and completing a number of different trades, Equiano is sold away to a Quaker and starts working on a field plantation. Serving as a guager on the plantation, Equiano performed his job at a high magnitude and was able to be paid for his services. Equiano was even able to save enough money to purchase his own freedom. Shortly after becoming a freeman, he decides to become an abolitionist to fight against slavery and writes a story of his life to showing how Africans are humans just as equal as others. His book was to speak for the African slave population and push to bring an end to
When sociologists argue that race is a social construction, they mean that it is more of a tool used by people to classify individuals than a biological reality. A conflict theorist would argue that race is a tool dictated by the powerful to oppress specific groups of people. The law passed by Congress in 1790 which granted rights of citizenship to only "free white persons" was an example of this. Many ethnicities fell under the term "whites", and over time, this term was then redefined to appease another powerful group 's agenda. The Immigration Act of 1924 was part of this agenda, placing yearly limits on immigrants coming to America by country.
At the young and tender age of 11, he was kidnapped by local slave traders and was then sold into slavery. In his biography, he talks about being brought from Africa aboard a ship, transported across the middle passage, and being further sold to slave owners. In the narrative, Equiano describes the horrendous conditions about the slave ship endured by both women and children and even white men. He continues about the physical abuse endured by Africans in slavery and the many atrocities he witnessed as a slave. As Equiano’s work continues to be read and studied by many today, it is often debated whether the details written in his biography are true to his own experience as a slave, greatly overlooking the actual important meaning of his
17.1 Captivity and Enslavement, Olaudah Equiano, the interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano written by himself 1. What are Equiano’s impressions of the white men on the ship and their treatment of the slaves? How does this treatment reflect the slave traders’ primary concerns? Equiano’s first impression of these white men is a feeling of uncertainty and sorrow for the future. As his story goes on Equiano is afraid of these white men, but also he is wishing to end it all because of the conditions and treatment of the slaves.
Ten years ago, I immigrated to the United States and ever since I have been an undocumented immigrant. Due to my legal status in the United States, I felt like I was restricted from certain situations and possessions and would never be able to succeed. I was not living the normal life of a seven-year-old. Instead, I had to learn to cope and adapt to a whole new culture. Even though the drastic change at such a young age was a challenge, it has shaped who I am today.
In this paper, I will be critiquing these articles and films in order to evaluate the purpose of these readings and how they have helped further develop race in America. But most importantly, whether the author has achieved its purpose to inform readers about CRT, whiteness, and racial inequality. First article, I will be analyzing is Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Both authors explore Critical Race Theory in detail. As I previously mentioned, CRT is one of the most important developments mainly in the legal studies department.
Disappointment. Betrayal. Deceived. All these terms are common themes in the writing of several immigrants during their journey to America. After reading many personal accounts of immigrants and learning about their expeditions to America, it became evident it is not as joyous a ride as many make it seem.
Americans had rarely accepted outsiders as equals, and that was the case with immigrants coming to the U.S in the 1840s to the 1920s. A time in America where immigrants were not considered inferior to native white Americans did not exist. The hatred of anything non-American, especially with the coming of World War I in 1914, would only cause more Americans to despise immigrants. Part of this was rooted simply in racism, which existed towards groups other than African Americans, but much of it was simply that Americans considered themselves the chosen people while everyone else was below them. Thus, despite immigrants being accepted into America, those immigrants were still treated far worse than white citizens between the 1840s and 1920s, for the prejudice against them was obvious even in the laws created.
What does it mean to be Hispanic in America? By Ishita Mishra When you look at a large mass of people, a large portion of them are Hispanic. Hispanics are all over America, but sometimes aren’t treated as equals. In fact, many Hispanic figures have helped shape America into the country that it is today.
Over the years, immigrants have influenced many aspects of American society and has had a vital role in shaping the United States to what it is today. According to the US Census Bureau, an agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System responsible for producing data about the American people and economy, “non-Hispanic white population in the U.S. declined from 85 percent in 1965 to 62.2 percent in 2014, and the forecast is for the percentage of non-Hispanic whites to fall to 43.6 percent in 2060” (qtd. in Walsh). Despite the rise of immigrants and the profound impact they have had on society, many immigrants face perpetual discrimination; this idea has appeared many times throughout Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees. Taking place during the 1970s, the main character, Taylor, moves from Kentucky to Arizona; along the way, she meets Esperanza and Estevan, illegal immigrants from Guatemala. As she gets to know them better, she notices they are forced to live a monotonous, arduous life which implies that immigrants face prejudice from Americans who claim to be accepting.
Racial identity plays a role in the physical and psychological features of humans. Physically, humans in different parts of the globe endure different conditions and environments. Humans adapt to their environments and obtain different physical traits, henceforth, these physical traits have become adjacent to race. Psychologically, ancestral prejudices and influences throughout history have lingered through the generations and have impacted modern racial identities and tensions. Ethnic conflicts of the past such as the Social Darwinist theory of a "superior race" are morally refuted in current times, but that assumption had a brunt impact in which the world is still repairing today.