CLASS PLAN

2.23.16

  1. Changing ideas of who is white, and how ethnicities were incorporated into a general definition of who is white.
  2. Let’s review a few things from last week.
  3. Discuss charts—visual information
  4. Two major theories explaining mass international migration—neo-classical theory and historical-structural theory
  5. Douglass Massey’s division of the 20th century into the classic era, the long hiatus, and the new regime
  6. Erika Lee’s work that claims that Chinese exclusion was much more than the first anti-immigrant law targeted a race, but one that shaped the immigration apparatus of laws, institutions, and attitudes henceforth.
  7. Today, we will discuss some of the major arguments found in Matthew Frye Jacobson’s book and will discuss how it explains migration
  8. Then, we are going to discuss the first assignment—biography of an immigrant. You need to have this interview completed by next Tuesday and the bio written by next Friday.

Let’s discuss Matthew Frye Jacobson’s argument. Last week, we discussed the argument that the Irish defined themselves as white and created immense anti-Chinese feeling as a way to deal with economic uncertainty. Much of this argument was based on the notion that economic forces explain the participation of Irish in working class politics and they defined themselves against Chinese coolie labor (slave labor) as a way of distinguishing themselves not only as free working men working for a family wage but also as WHITE men. This was the argument proposed by David Roediger in his book Wages of Whiteness.

Jacobson challenges this economic determinism by stating that simply wanting to exclude Chinese people from the country wasn’t enough to explain the experience of minorities, including non-Anglo white minorities like the Irish. Furthermore, while white ethnic groups were racialized as different, this did not necessarily exclude them from participating as white, especially when defined in contrast to non-white. So white immigrants could be racially defined in both ways positions, as not quite Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Saxon and as White.

Jacobson’s argument relies on the original definition of “free white person” as written in the 1790 Naturalization act. And the question of who constituted a free white person.

How was this idea defined?

What was this republican ideal of a free white person? And by republican I’m not referring to the current republic parties, but classic American republican ideology embraced by the Founders of the country.

While there was an expansion of the vote to those who did not own property, early 19th c. there was a big debate about whether those who immigrated beginning in the 1840s could be considered free white persons. Were Catholics able to make decisions on their own? Were Irish men really men? Could the Jews be trusted to make decisions for the nation? Were Italians too hot headed?

All underpinned by the question, were they really white? Or were they biologically different? Could they be both?

Main currents of this period:

  1. industrialization in United States and demand for cheap labor
  2. nativist perception of these workers as a political threat
  3. monolithic whiteness is fractured by political concerns over newcomers’ fitness for self-government

“Rather, the political history of whiteness and its vicissitudes between the 1840s and the 1920s represents a shift from one brand of bedrock racism to another—from the unquestioned hegemony of a unified race of “white persons” to a contest over the political “fitness” among a now fragmented, hierarchically arranged series of distinct “white races.” (p. 42)

Really about the political fitness for self-government of these groups.