ipl-logo

Immigrants In The 1920's

822 Words4 Pages

The United States experienced an influx of immigrants between the 1890’s to the 1920’s. Immigrants entered the United States from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. From these demographic shifts we can also see that there were changed in the United States attitudes towards recent immigrants. These attitudes are grounded in racialized notions of foreign peoples and African Americans. Nativist notions are set in ideas of whiteness and different factors make Eastern Europe and Southern Europe immigrants not quite white.
Nativism is the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants. The nativists were set in their own ideas of whiteness. They favor those who are white and grant those a better set of privileges over others. If you were not white the nativists did not like you. Therefore, if you were …show more content…

Many new immigrants rejected this notion. If you were not an Anglo-Saxon, you were not considered to be white. In Roedeinger’s “Working Towards Whiteness,” he talks about incidents that happened in a couple different place. “In Louisiana and Mississippi, southern Italians learned Jim Crow tardily, even when legally accepted as whites, so much so that native whites fretted and black southerners ‘made unabashed distinctions between Dagoes and white folks’ treating the former with a ‘friendly, first name familiarity.” (p. 96) Rodeninger continues on to talk about how two acts that happened in Mississippi and Louisiana. “In a Mississippi town whites wrecked an Italian American restaurant and drove away its owner after he defied Jim Crow by serving a black customer. After a Louisiana lynching of three Italians in 1896, so many African Americans showed up to mourn that local whites fretted about the possibility of interracial revenge.” (p. 96) Whites in America did not like those who were said to be white in American, but they are not native

Show More
Related

  • The Role Of Immigrants In The Mid-19th Century

    308 Words  | 2 Pages

    The mid-19th century saw an unprecedented wave of immigrants coming into the country. At its peak, Ellis Island, the main processing station for immigrants, handled an astounding 5,000 people every day. Because of the language and culture barriers faced by each group of people, they often settled amongst themselves. Very quickly, country-specific neighborhoods began popping up throughout New York and the surrounding area. This helped to alleviate the stresses with moving to a new country; however, most immigrants came to the United States penniless and lived in low-income housing as their jobs rarely supported themselves let alone their families.

    Read More

  • African Americans In The 1920's

    1236 Words  | 5 Pages

    African Americans face a struggle with racism which has been present in our country before the Civil War began in 1861. America still faces racism today however, around the 1920’s the daily life of an African American slowly began to improve. Thus, this time period was known by many, as the “Negro Fad” (O’Neill). The quality of life and freedom of African Americans that lived in the United States was constantly evolving and never completely considered ‘equal’. From being enslaved, to fighting for their freedom, African Americans were greatly changing the status quo and beginning to make their mark in the United States.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Old And New Immigration

    213 Words  | 1 Pages

    On October 21st at the noon lecture we had one of our freshmen year experience professors address the issue of immigration. Professor Daniel Malpica started the lecture by stating why immigration is important. He had gave us many reasons but the most important idea that I took from the list was how immigration has changed the face of the United States. It has been said that 13.5% of the United States’ population is made of up immigrants. Throughout the lecture we began to distinguish the differences and similarities between “Old” immigration and “New” immigration.

    Read More

  • Gilded Age Immigrants

    331 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lex Gilded Age Immigrants During the Gilded Age “New” Immigrants came and were worse at integrating than the Old Immigrants. New Immigrants which hailed places like Greece, Mexico, and China. New Immigrants that didn’t speak English and didn’t share the same customs. How racist was the gilded age?

    Read More

  • Describe The New Immigration

    554 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hailing from southern and eastern Europe, the Americans were unused to seeing people with such unfamiliar looks and customs, which spawned dislike and disgust. The Old Immigration involved immigrants leaving English speaking countries like the British Isles or countries that had Protestantism dominating their religion, like Germany. Old Immigrants tended to have the familiar Anglo-Saxon appearance and

    Read More

  • Irish Discrimination In America

    1738 Words  | 7 Pages

    The NINA, No Irish Need Apply, was put in place to discriminate Irish against receiving employment. Signs were put up that said “Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply,” this forced most Irish individuals to work in unskilled jobs because the skilled jobs did not want to hire Irish because they were Irish. After nearly 40 years of Irish hate, they finally assimilated into society. The Irish integrated mostly because the WASPs changed their views about the Irish. A wave of “new immigrants” came to the Untied States such as Darker-Skinned and Jewish and Irish became the “old immigrants.”

    Read More

  • Summary Of Repressive Tolerance

    994 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a result of their emigration, America was now viewed as “multiethnic and multiracial” and “defined in terms of culture and creed” (Huntington 1). On the contrary, when people traveled across the border from Mexico, their culture was not so widely accepted. Mexican traditions and values were seen as a “serious challenge to America’s traditional identity” (Huntington 2). The “original settlers” of America were incredibly open to people travelling from Europe, but when people came from Latin America, they were

    Read More

  • Immigrants During The Gilded Age

    127 Words  | 1 Pages

    Most immigrants who came to the U.S had high expectations that they would find wealth but once they arrived they realized their expectations weren’t what they expected. Although, they were disappointed in not finding wealth the conditions in which the U.S was in by the late 1800s were still a lot better than the places they all had left behind to come. The majority of the immigration population anticipation was to find profitable jobs and opportunities. When the large numbers of immigration were migrating to the U.S, it was during the “Gilded Age”, which was the prime time for the country’s expansion of industrialization. This rapid expansion of new industries led to the need of workers which motivated people from other countries to come to

    Read More

  • 1920's Immigration Issue

    181 Words  | 1 Pages

    Founded by colonists, settlers and pioneers, the United States can be defined as a land of immigrants. But public opinion on immigration has changed dramatically in the past decades. In the 1920s, the majority of these immigrants originate from Europe, while immigrants in the United States today include a large percentage of those coming from Asia and Latin America (Chow and Keating). Immigration issues made division in the general public, especially among politicians. The greatest controversial subject in the immigration issue is the subject of illegal immigration.

    Read More

  • Prohibition And Immigration In The 1920's

    630 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1920’s was an interesting time in American history. This era was also known as the roaring twenties. Although it is remembered as a fond time before the Great Depression there was also a lot of conflicts arising, Cultural conflicts in particular were at the center. Prohibition and Immigration were two of the main cultural conflicts during this time period.

    Read More

  • Nativism In The 1920's

    215 Words  | 1 Pages

    Nativism is described as “the political idea that people who were born in a country are more important than immigrants”( "Nativism Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary"). Nativism was most seen during the 1870’s through the 1920’s. Nativism was a major cause in middle-class disputes since middle-class workers feared that the immigrant workers would drop wage prices and that they “...threatened social stability”(The Many Faces of Immigration). Many Catholic immigrants were blamed for the overflow of immigrants in the poverty sections of cities.

    Read More

  • Race And Culture In William Melvin Kelley's Article, Breeds Of America

    378 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article, “Breeds of America: Coming of Age, Coming of Race,” which was first published in the Harper’s magazine, William Melvin Kelley recalls his “confusing” childhood of being a colored citizen in the United States. He begins his memoir by portraying a simple skin comparison with his friends. An Italy kid was blushed because he had a same brown skin color as Kelly does under the sun. Kelly raised a question about that blush: why would brown skin make the Italy kid embarrassing? Then Kelly introduces the unfair collision of race and culture.

    Read More

  • Essay On Immigration In The 1920s

    714 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Whiteness As Property Analysis

    715 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fahad Albrahim Response 1: Review/Summary: “Whiteness as property” is an article written by Cheryl Harris, in which she addresses the subject of racial identity and property in the United States. Throughout the article, professor Harris attempts to explain how the concept of whiteness was initiated to become a form of racial identity, which evolved into a property widely protected in American law (page 1713). Harris tackles a number of facts that describe the roots of whiteness as property in American history at the expense of minorities such as Black and American natives (page 1709). Additionally, Harris describes how whiteness as property evolved to become seen as a racial privilege in which the whites gained more benefits, whether

    Read More

  • Prejudice And Discrimination In A Different Mirror By Ronald Takaki

    1236 Words  | 5 Pages

    As a young country, the United States was a land of prejudice and discrimination. Wanting to grow their country, white Americans did what they had to in order to make sure that they were always on top, and that they were always the superior race. It did not matter who got hurt along the way because everything that they did was eventually justified by their thinking that all other races were inferior to them. A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki describes the prejudice and discrimination against African Americans and Native Americans in the early history of the United States.

    Read More

More about Immigrants In The 1920's

Open Document