The views and opinions expressed on this site and blog posts (excluding comments on blog posts left by others) are entirely my own and do not represent those of any employer or organization with whom I am currently or previously have been associated.
Academic Version: Applying my personal experiences and academic research as a professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies to provide a more complete understanding of political, economic, and cultural issues and current events related to American race relations, and Asia/Asian America in particular.
Plain English: Trying to put my Ph.D. to good use.
As part of this blog’s mission of making academic research and data more easily accessible, understandable, and applicable to a wider audience and to practical, everyday social issues, I highlight new sociological books about Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups as I hear about them. A book’s inclusion is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily mean a full endorsement of its complete contents.
This is the first week of classes for many colleges and universities around the country, including here at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This semester I am teaching a new course: “The Sociology of Immigration” (in case you’re curious, you can download a PDF of the syllabus). It’s a topic that is central and directly relevant to many issues that I cover in this blog, and a course that I have always wanted to teach but haven’t had the opportunity to do so until now.
President Obama has also recently suggested that immigration reform is one of the next major policy issues that he and his administration want to address next (although he said this before the upset victory of Republican Scott Brown in MA). Presuming that he follows through on this promise, immigration is set to again move to the front burner of American discussion and controversy.
With these things in mind, I plan on writing a more detailed post about immigration reform soon but in the meantime, I would like to highlight some new books on different aspects of the immigration issue that I will be using as source material for my “Sociology of Immigration” course and that will hopefully provide some sociological data and analysis to help us tackle the question of immigration reform.
The first book, Reinventing the Melting Pot, is the textbook that I have assigned to my students in my “Sociology of Immigration” course.
In Reinventing the Melting Pot, twenty-one of the writers who have thought longest and hardest about immigration come together around a surprising consensus: yes, immigrant absorption still works-and given the number of newcomers arriving today, the nation’s future depends on it. But it need not be incompatible with ethnic identity-and we as a nation need to find new ways to talk about and encourage becoming American.
In the wake of 9/11 it couldn’t be more important to help these newcomers find a way to fit in. Running through these essays is a single common theme: Although ethnicity plays a more important role now than ever before, today’s newcomers can and will become Americans and enrich our national life-reinventing the melting pot and reminding us all what we have in common.
African Americans grappled with Jim Crow segregation until it was legally overturned in the 1960s. In subsequent decades, the country witnessed a new wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America—forever changing the face of American society. In The Diversity Paradox, Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean take these two poles of American collective identity—the legacy of slavery and immigration—and ask if today’s immigrants are destined to become racialized minorities akin to African Americans or if their incorporation into U.S. society will more closely resemble that of their European predecessors.
The Diversity Paradox uses population-based analyses and in-depth interviews to examine patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification among Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. Lee and Bean . . . show that Asians and Latinos with mixed ancestry are not constrained by strict racial categories. Racial status often shifts according to situation. Individuals can choose to identify along ethnic lines or as white, and their decisions are rarely questioned by outsiders or institutions. These groups also intermarry at higher rates, which is viewed as part of the process of becoming “American†and a form of upward social mobility.
African Americans, in contrast, intermarry at significantly lower rates than Asians and Latinos. Further, multiracial blacks often choose not to identify as such and are typically perceived as being black only—underscoring the stigma attached to being African American and the entrenchment of the “one-drop†rule. Asians and Latinos are successfully disengaging their national origins from the concept of race—like European immigrants before them.
The Diversity Paradox is an extensive and eloquent examination of how contemporary immigration and the country’s new diversity are redefining the boundaries of race. The book also lays bare the powerful reality that as the old black/white color line fades a new one may well be emerging—with many African Americans still on the other side.
As the authors state in Chapter 1, “[T]he movement of people across national borders represents one of the most vivid dramas of social reality in the contemporary world.†This comparative text examines contemporary immigration across the globe, focusing on 20 major nations.
Noted scholars Peter Kivisto and Thomas Faist introduce students to important topics of inquiry at the heart of the field, including: (a) Movement: explores the theories of migration using a historical perspective of the modern world; (b) Settlement: provides clarity concerning the controversial matter of immigrant incorporation and refers to the varied ways immigrants come to be a part of a new society; and (c) Control: focuses on the politics of immigration and examines the role of states in shaping how people choose to migrate.
Immigrants and their children comprise nearly three-fifths of New York City’s population and even more of Miami and Los Angeles. But the United States is also a nation with entrenched racial divisions that are being complicated by the arrival of newcomers. While immigrant parents may often fear that their children will “disappear” into American mainstream society, leaving behind their ethnic ties, many experts fear that they won’t—evolving instead into a permanent unassimilated and underemployed underclass.
Inheriting the City confronts these fears with evidence, reporting the results of a major study examining the social, cultural, political, and economic lives of today’s second generation in metropolitan New York, and showing how they fare relative to their first-generation parents and native-stock counterparts. The authors studied the young adult offspring of West Indian, Chinese, Dominican, South American, and Russian Jewish immigrants and compared them to blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans with native-born parents.
They find that today’s second generation is generally faring better than their parents, with Chinese and Russian Jewish young adults achieving the greatest education and economic advancement, beyond their first-generation parents and even beyond their native-white peers. Every second-generation group is doing at least marginally—and, in many cases, significantly—better than natives of the same racial group across several domains of life. Economically, each second-generation group earns as much or more than its native-born comparison group, especially African Americans and Puerto Ricans, who experience the most persistent disadvantage.
Inheriting the City shows the children of immigrants can often take advantage of policies and programs that were designed for native-born minorities in the wake of the civil rights era. Indeed, the ability to choose elements from both immigrant and native-born cultures has produced, the authors argue, a second-generation advantage that catalyzes both upward mobility and an evolution of mainstream American culture. . . . Adapting elements from their parents’ cultures as well as from their native-born peers, the children of immigrants are not only transforming the American city but also what it means to be American.
Here are some more announcements and links out that have come my way relating to Asians or Asian Americans. As always, links to other sites are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of their contents.
My name is Reimar Macaranas and I am the Community Program Manager at Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP). I wanted to ask for your help in outreaching to your Asian and Pacific Islander students in regards to the paid summer internship we have offered each year for the past 13 years.
This is a two-month summer internship where we put interns in Asian and Pacific Islander community-based organizations (a full list of past
organizations we have worked with is on the website link provided) for 4 days of the week, where they would be working hands-on with communities on specific projects the organizations have proposed to us. The other day of the week, they would be at LEAP, going through workshops, community dialogues and panels to not only increase personal development, but community development as well.
Reimar Macaranas
Community Program Manager
Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP)
(213) 485-1422×4102
(213) 485-0050 (fax)
rmacaranas@leap.org
www.leap.org
Call for Applications: “Settling Into Motion“ – The Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarships in Migration Studies. The ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Ph.D. scholarship program in migration studies “Settling Into Motion” offers up to eight scholarships for Ph.D. theses addressing migration in changing societies.
For 2010, research applications on “Migration, Diversity and the Future of Modern Societies†are especially welcome. Qualified Ph.D. students of – in a broad sense – social sciences can apply until 25 February 2010. Please find further information as well as the online application on the program’s website.
Migration leads to increasing diversity in many countries all over the world. Sometimes this results in challenges of established institutions as well as cultural practices of modern societies. Current migrant populations are more heterogeneous than ever before: migrants and their descendants have not only different religious, cultural and ethnic roots, but they also differ with regard to their citizenship status, as well as their professional and economic backgrounds.
At the same time, governments in receiving societies frequently react to this phenomenon with integration schemes that implicitly address a non-existent homogeneous “migrant populationâ€. On the other hand, there are examples where diversity and cultural pluralism are seen as strength and advantage. We encourage the following topics, but will also consider other approaches:
Diversity and political order
Migration and cultural, ethnic and religious diversity
Integration policies
Cultural policy and the management of diversity
Concepts and categories in migration and integration debates
Innovative approaches both in terms of subject matter and methodology are highly encouraged.
Re-SEAing SouthEast Asian American Studies. Memories & Visions: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.
San Francisco State University
March 10-11, 2011
The third tri-annual interdisciplinary Southeast Asians in the Diaspora conference will take place at San Francisco State University. The San Francisco Bay Area is home to sizable populations of Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Lao, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai, and Vietnamese Americans. This conference will foreground the large Southeast Asian American communities of the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and the Pacific Northwest, as well as continue to build momentum and grow just as the Southeast Asian American demographics increase in size and visibility here in the U.S. and in particular, on the West Coast.
The main objectives of this conference are:
to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Southeast Asian
American peoples and their communities
to promote national and international cooperation in the field
to establish partnerships between academia and the community
This two-day conference explores memories (e.g., memories of homeland; memories of war; memories of childhood and growing up American; historical memories; embodied memories; intergenerational memories; technologies of memories; and imagined/created memories) and visions (actual sightings and sites of Southeast Asian Americans and their communities, both real and imaginary). Because this conference takes place after the constitutionally mandated 2010 census, the focus will be on locating/situating Southeast Asian American Studies for the 21st century.
The conference invites proposals for panels, workshops, and individual papers from all disciplines and fields of study that explore the dialectical relationship between memories and visions related to the following topics:
Southeast Asian American health and wellness
Southeast Asian American social justice
Southeast Asian American and critical pedagogy
Southeast Asian American youth cultures
Southeast Asian American folklore, folklife, and religions
Southeast Asian American families, relationships, and communities
Southeast Asian American queer cultures and spaces
Southeast Asian American sexualities
Southeast Asian Americans of mixed heritage/race
Southeast Asian American transnationality, transnationalization, and transnationalism
Sino-Southeast Asian Americans
Explorations of how artists (writers, filmmakers, visual artists) “see†and envision themselves and their communities as Southeast Asian Americans
The location and relationship of Southeast Asia to Southeast Asian America
The shifting demographics of Southeast Asian Americans vis-Ã -vis (in)visibility
Papers will also be considered on any related topics in Southeast Asian American Studies. 250 word abstracts should be submitted by June 15, 2010 to Dr. Jonathan H. X. Lee at jlee@sfsu.edu with the following information: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, and d) abstract with title.
All papers will go through an internal review process and decisions regarding acceptance of papers for the conference will be communicated by October 15, 2010. Information on previous conferences:
Jonathan H. X. Lee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies
San Francisco State University
Department of Asian American Studies
1600 Holloway Ave, EP 103
San Francisco, CA 94132
Do you know of any non-profit organizations which benefit the Asian American community? If so, please encourage their Executive Director to consider spending a week at Harvard to sharpen their leadership skills and make their organizations more effective.
For the 5th consecutive year, the Harvard Business School Asian American Alumni Association (HBS4A) will be sponsoring a full tuition, room, board, and materials scholarship for a non-profit organization executive director to attend the Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management program at HBS this July. Alaric Bien, last year’s HBS4A Scholarship recipient and Executive Director of the CISC had this to say after completing the program last year:
“The SPNM experience was truly amazing! Scary and somewhat intimidating at first to be part of a group of such high powered, incredibly sharp and dedicated nonprofit executives from literally all over the world, but what a wonderful privilege to have access to all those resources and knowledge.
The professors were awesome – incredibly expert in their fields, inspiring, great teachers, and they really understand what it’s like to work in the real world of the nonprofit sector. I came back to CISC charged up and eager to put into practice what we learned during that short, but oh so intense week at HBS. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity!”
Previous organizations which have benefited from the HBS4A scholarship include the New York Asian Women’s Center in 2006, the Chinese Community Center in Houston in 2007, the Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Association of Philadelphia in 2008, and the Chinese Information and Service Center of Seattle in 2009.
If you know of an Executive Director at a non profit organization which benefits the Asian American community, please direct them to the scholarship website for more information! Thanks to all the HBS4A dues-paying members for helping make this empowering program possible!
As we near the end of 2009, it’s fitting to review the major events, developments, and trends in U.S. racial/ethnic relations in 2009. Therefore, below is my look back at some of the positive highlights as well as the setbacks in terms of achieving racial/ethnic equality, with a particular focus on Asian Americans (my area of expertise). This list is not meant to be an exhaustive review of all racial/ethnic news in 2009, but rather the ones that I covered in this blog and ones that I believe have the most sociological significance.
The Best
King, Obama, Tet, and the Diversity of Change A new year brings new hope as we connect Martin Luther King, Barack Obama’s historic election, and Tet the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, around the theme of change, rebirth, and renewal.
Gary Locke and the Future of Asian American Identity How Gary Locke’s confirmation as Secretary of Commerce represents the forging of a new identity for Asian Americans as they contribute to strengthening American society in the 21st century.
Jim Yong Kim: First Ivy League President Korean American Dr. Jim Yong Kim is named Dartmouth’s next President, becoming the first Asian American president of an Ivy League school.
Kimchi Quesadillas and Korean BBQ Tacos The fusion of Korean and Mexican food in Los Angeles represents another melding of different cultures in contemporary American society.
Recession Can Lead to Better Race Relations The current recession has certainly led to a lot of hostility and conflict, but can also help bring Americans together and bridge racial divides as they support one another.
How Immigrants Contribute to American Society Within the partisan an emotional debates on the cultural and economic effects of immigration, several new studies point out that immigrants ultimately make several important contributions to American society.
Asian Americans Celebrate Several Congressional Achievements The “End of Year Report” from the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus summarizes the major achievements by Asian Americans in the federal government, including renewing the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the diversity of federal appointments by President Obama, and several significant legislative proposals.
The Worst
Asian Americans and Workplace-Employment Discrimination New data describes employment and workplace discrimination against Asian Americans who work for the federal government and notes that while Asian Americans have the highest rates of experiencing discrimination, they are the least likely to formally report them and to file complaints.
Blacks and Latinos Hurt More by Recession Data shows that Blacks and Latinos are the racial groups hardest hit by the current recession, based on several institutional disadvantages they face.
The Degrees of Immigrant Bashing Examining the different ways in which Americans blame and attack immigrants for the political and economic problems that we face.
Swimming Pools and Modern Day Segregation The racial discrimination at a swimming pool in suburban Philadelphia sadly reveals the limits of being colorblind and unfortunate persistence of American racism.
Economic Competition and Intra-Minority Tensions Examining both the individual motives and institutional factors that have contributed to a pattern of recent physical attacks against Asian American students in Philadelphia.
New York Marathon Winner: Not a ‘Real’ American? Questions about Meb Keflezighi’s ‘American’ identity after winning the New York City Marathon is the latest example of anti-immigrant and anti-minority backlash among many White Americans.
Escalation of Student Racial Violence in Philadelphia An escalation of violence between African American and Asian American students in Philadelphia highlights not just racial tensions but also the utter failure of school leaders.
As we turn the page on 2009 and the entire decade (one that many Americans would like to forget), let’s hope that 2010 and the new decade will lead to more prosperity, equality, and harmony for Americans from all racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
We all know that immigration — legal and unauthorized — has been a hot-button topic for a while now. This is the case even before President Obama has even seriously tackled the question of immigration reform. One of the key points of contention has been whether immigrants contribute more to American society than they receive in social services.
In recent weeks, a few new studies try to shed some more light on this question and in the process, inject a little objectivity and data into an otherwise emotionally-charged debate. The first report comes from the non-partisan Fiscal Policy Institute and as described at the Immigration Impacts blog at the Immigration Policy Center, the economic contributions of immigrants constitute a net benefit for their communities:
The report studies the 25 largest metro areas (by population) which produce nearly one half of the total gross domestic product of the country. It shows that in the country’s main metropolises, the share of the immigrant population stacks up neatly against their share of economic output. For example, immigrants are responsible for 20% of economic output and make up 20% of the population in these 25 metropolitan areas. In other words, immigrants pull their own weight.
From the report: . . . “From the Pittsburgh metro area, where immigrants make up 3 percent of the population and 4 percent of economic output, to the Miami metro area, where immigrants represent 37 percent of all residents and 38 percent of economic out¬put, immigrants are playing a consistently proportionate role in local economies.”
The overall impact of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy is small. According to [Economics Professor Gordon Hanson, the report’s author], “Illegal immigration produces a tiny net gain to the U.S. economy after subtracting U.S.-born workers’ losses from U.S. employers’ gains. And if we account for the small fiscal burden that unauthorized immigrants impose, the overall economic benefit is close enough to zero to be essentially a wash.”
Enforcement against illegal immigration is expensive. The U.S. spends approximately $15 billion annually enforcing immigration laws. A simple cost-benefit analysis indicates that the high level of spending on enforcement is not justified. . . .
MPI policy analyst Marc Rosenblum and Jeanne Butterfield of the National Immigration Forum largely agreed with Hanson, but took the argument a step further, making a strong case for legalization . . . Rosenblum pointed out that the net fiscal impact of illegal immigrants improves over time—immigrants are not only workers, but consumers, entrepreneurs, and investors, and their contributions improve over time.
This particular report basically confirms earlier research that show that legal immigrants constitute a notable net gain for American society and its economy and that taken together, unauthorized immigrants also contribute more both in the short term (through paying sales taxes, income taxes, overall purchasing power, and entrepreneurial activities) and long term (by becoming productive citizens and not having to rely on public assistance).
Finally, at New America Media, a third article on the contributions of immigrants points out that as the laws currently exist, legal immigrants are prohibited from using Medicaid (the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans), even though they pay federal taxes that help to fund such programs and that in essence, recent legal immigrants are subsidizing healthcare for everyone else:
Currently, legal immigrants, who work and pay taxes that contribute to our health care system will continue to be ineligible to receive federally-funded Medicaid services for five years. In this case, we are not talking about those who make at least 133 percent of federal poverty level and could access affordability credits like everyone else for purchasing insurance in the exchange. We are talking about immigrants with the lowest incomes. It is unreasonable and saddening that under the current health reform proposals, the people who really need it will not get it.
I am under no delusions that these reports and data will change the mind of hard-core or extremist opponents of immigration (legal and unauthorized) anytime soon. Rather, for those who are willing to consider valid, reliable, and nonpartisan research, these studies are useful in wading through some of the political ideology and seeing what the actual numbers say.
With that in mind, the time for comprehensive immigration reform has come. By comprehensive, it means that we need to focus on more than just reinforcing our border with Mexico. Instead, it also means overhauling our immigration detention system, which, a new bipartisan report finds, has a long and documented history of bureaucratic lapses, with the detainees routinely denied basic rights such as being told why they are being held.
It also means providing unauthorized citizens already in country with a path toward eventual citizenship and access to opportunities to achieve social and economic mobility, such as the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act (currently being debated in Congress) that would allow young immigrants without legal status who demonstrate “good moral character” to apply for citizenship.
Both a revelation and a call-to-action, Immigrant, Inc. explores the uncommon skill and drive of America’s new immigrants and their knack for innovation and entrepreneurship. From the techies who created icons of the new economy — Intel, Google, eBay and Sun Microsystems — to the young engineers tinkering with solar power and next-generation car batteries, immigrants have proven themselves to be America’s competitive advantage . . . [and] will create the American jobs of the future — if we let them.
That last part seems to be the key — immigrants have much to contribute to American society and our economy, if only we let them do so, rather than trying to get rid of them.
Often, when I write about racism and anti-minority racial attitudes in the U.S., readers ask how such attitudes here in the U.S. compare with similar attitudes around the world. Frequently, the implication is, how bad do American racial minorities have it here, compared to other minorities around in other countries? This is often a very difficult question to answer because you have to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.
In other words, just like in any kind of ‘scientific’ study or research, you need to make sure that other conditions or factors are the as similar as possible so that you can isolate the one or two variables that do differ between two sample populations, in this case countries. However, since very few countries share the same history, institutional dynamics, population demographics, etc., such direct cross-national comparisons are difficult to make.
Nonetheless, it can still be interesting to compare and contrast such racial attitudes across countries, as long as we don’t generalize too much about them and prematurely conclude that one country is “better” than another in terms of how racial minorities are treated. In fact, I’ve posted about racial attitudes in Japan and Australia. With that disclaimer in mind, the New York Times recently posted an article that looks at how anti-minority attitudes may be changing in South Korea:
South Korea, a country where until recently people were taught to take pride in their nation’s “ethnic homogeneity” . . . is struggling to embrace a new reality. In just the past seven years, the number of foreign residents has doubled, to 1.2 million, even as the country’s population of 48.7 million is expected to drop sharply in coming decades because of its low birth rate. Many of the foreigners come here to toil at sea or on farms or in factories, providing cheap labor in jobs shunned by South Koreans. . . .
In a report issued Oct. 21, Amnesty International criticized discrimination in South Korea against migrant workers, who mostly are from poor Asian countries, citing sexual abuse, racial slurs, inadequate safety training and the mandatory disclosure of H.I.V. status, a requirement not imposed on South Koreans in the same jobs. Citing local news media and rights advocates, it said that following last year’s financial downturn, “incidents of xenophobia are on the rise.” . . .
The Foreign Ministry supports an anti-discrimination law, said Kim Se-won, a ministry official. In 2007, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that South Korea adopt such a law . . . But [Critics of the proposed legislation] charged that such a law would only encourage even more migrant workers to come to South Korea, pushing native workers out of jobs and creating crime-infested slums. They also said it was too difficult to define what was racially or culturally offensive.
“Our ethnic homogeneity is a blessing,†said one of the critics, Lee Sung-bok, a bricklayer who said his job was threatened by migrant workers. “If they keep flooding in, who can guarantee our country won’t be torn apart by ethnic war as in Sri Lanka?â€
The first part of the New York Times article describes specific incidents of discrimination faced by non-Korean individuals in the country and are very telling — anyone who is both non-Korean and non-White generally face a lot of hostility, but non-Koreans who are White (generally American or European) are admired, although still not seen as equal to Koreans. As one example:
[A Korean woman’s] father and other relatives grilled her as to whether she was dating Mr. Hussain [an Indian working in South Korea]. But when a cousin recently married a German, “all my relatives envied her, as if her marriage was a boon to our family,†she said.
Another interesting issue in this larger dynamic relates to how Asian Americans and Korean Americans are treated in South Korea. This example illustrates some of the contradictions that they face in the country:
Tammy Chu, 34, a Korean-born film director who was adopted by Americans and grew up in New York State, said she had been “scolded and yelled at” in Seoul subways for speaking in English and thus “not being Korean enough.” Then, she said, her applications for a job as an English teacher were rejected on the grounds that she was “not white enough.”
It is indeed sad to see that fist, non-White non-Koreans seem to face persistent racial prejudice and discrimination in South Korea. Many people of color in the U.S. can certainly relate to their situation and regardless of the country involved, people from all backgrounds deserve to be treated equally.
Second, it is also sad to see that much of South Korea appears to be in denial about what it means to live in the 21st century. Specifically, with globalization and international migration taking place all around them and leading to inevitable demographic shifts in almost all developed countries around the world, many South Koreans appear to be clinging to age-old stereotypes that “foreigners” are automatically bad for their country and will lead to the destruction of their economy and culture.
What this kind of attitude fails to recognize is that larger institutional trends are what is responsible for their country being in dire conditions to begin with and that the influx of immigrants is just one symptom of these larger social forces, not the original cause of them. In fact, the immigrants in their country likely provide many unseen benefits to the country. Unfortunately, their contributions are easily overlooked due to their status as manual laborers, their non-Korean and non-White background, and the general economic instability that leads many Koreans to vent their frustrations onto immigrants who they perceive to be competitors for scarce resources.
In that sense, the situation in South Korea in terms of how racially-distinct immigrants are treated is very similar to that in many other countries, including the U.S.
A common theme in many of my recent posts has been the backlash among many White Americans against various demographic, cultural, political, economic, and globalized changes taking place in American society and the world in general. As their percentage of the U.S. population continues to shrink, as non-Whites become increasingly prominent in our society (represented at the very top by Barack Obama), and with the recession heightening their fears and insecurities, many White Americans have reacted angrily to their traditional “way of life” being threatened.
I don’t really enjoy writing about such incidents and would really like to let it go and instead, focus on more positive aspects of American society moving forward in the 21st century. But unfortunately, these kinds of racist backlash keep happening over and over again. The latest example involves Meb Keflezighi, an Eritrean American who recently won the New York City Marathon. This video clip from MSNBC focuses on his well-earned victory:
Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, his victory has also led to charges that his victory should not really count as an “American” victory because he is not “really” American:
He was widely celebrated as the first American to win the New York race since 1982. Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen and a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels. But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner. . . .
The online postings about Keflezighi were anonymous. One of the milder ones on Letsrun.com said: “Give us all a break. It’s just another African marathon winner.”
A comment on The New York Times’s site said: “Keflezighi is really another elite African runner by birth, upbringing, and training. Americans are kidding themselves if they say he represents a resurgence of American distance prowess! On the other hand, he is an excellent representative of how we import everything we need!”
In a commentary on CNBC.com, Darren Rovell wrote, “Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.”
To clarify, Keflezighi came to the U.S. at the age of 12, so he is part of what sociologists tend to call the “1.5” generation — immigrants who came to the U.S. at age 12 or younger and who were raised, socialized, and educated primarily within American society. As the NY Times article also notes, he is “a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels.”
The question becomes, if Keflezighi is not a “real” American, then what exactly are the qualifications of being a “real” American?
Apparently, coming to the U.S. at a young age and being raised and educated in the U.S. doesn’t qualify one as a “real” American. Neither does being a naturalized citizen. And according to many, being born in the U.S. is not enough to qualify someone as a “real” American either, as many Asian Americans will attest to, having their loyalties questioned, challenged, and attacked.
We need to call it for what it is — White racism, plain and simple.
The sad fact is, for many Americans, unless you are White, you will never be a “real” American. That includes non-White or -European immigrants and U.S.-born racial minorities. This institutional mentality has a long tradition throughout American history. Perhaps the best example that comes to mind is the Cherokee Nation.
In the early 1800s, with Whites encroaching on their traditional lands in the south, the Cherokees were basically told that if they wanted to physically survive, they had to discard their “savage” ways and become Americanized. The Cherokees proceeded to do just that and completely changed their way of life — they learned English as well as romanized their traditional language, began wearing “American” clothing, set up a bicameral governing structure based on Congress’s model, and changed their economy from one based on hunting to one focused on farming and trading.
But in the end, their efforts were in vain because they basically learned that despite their actions, since they were not White, they could never be American. The Cherokee were subsequently evicted from their lands and in the infamous “Trail of Tears” episode of American history, forcibly marched from northwestern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee one thousand miles westward. Along the way, about 25% of the estimated 15,000 who started died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, or were murdered before finally reaching the Oklahoma territory and their newly-established “reservations.”
Even though non-Whites may display all the “normal” characteristics and behaviors of a “typical” American — being fluent in English, getting a good education and a good job, owning a nice house in the suburbs, paying taxes, voting in elections, attending Christian churches, going to ballgames and having backyard barbecues — unless you are White, your identity as a “real” American will inevitably be challenged in one way or another.
Often, naturalized Americans have done more to establish their “American-ness†than those who are American by accident of birth. Which isn’t to say that naturalized Americans are more American than domestically-born Americans; being American isn’t a question of degrees. Instead, it’s simple math: one is or one isn’t American.
As I’ve said before, change does not come easily and without resistance of one kind or another and unfortunately, this anti-immigrant and anti-minority backlash will exist for the foreseeable future.
In a recent post titled “The Degrees of Immigrant Bashing,” I described various ways in which the recession has led to increased anti-immigrant hostility, leading to blatantly offensive comments from public officials, acts of violence and hate crimes, and misguided federal regulations. As a follow up, blogger Michelle Waslin at Immigration Impact writes that, perhaps ironically, the recession seems to have resulted in fewer anti-immigrant proposals and legislation being passed this year at the local and state levels:
According to the Progressive States Network (PSN), budget deficits have meant that states are unwilling to pass legislation with a cost attached. Immigration is less of a wedge issue in 2009—that is, politicians seem less willing to push anti-immigrant platforms because candidates who did so in the 2008 elections lost.
PSN also reports that anti-immigrant legislators have been marginalized in 2009. Bills introduced by Texas State Rep. Leo Berman, a notorious anti-immigrant voice, got no traction, even from within his own party. No votes were taken on any of his 9 anti-immigrant bills. In Arizona, State Senator Russell Pearce has had little success with his anti-immigrant agenda this year. An Arizona Republic editorial criticized Pearce for devoting time and energy to immigrant-bashing instead of doing the real work that needs to be done on the state budget. Even Prince William County, Virginia Executive Corey Stewart—well known for his anti-immigrant rhetoric—has backed down, acknowledging that problems other than immigration deserve more attention. . . .
It is clear that vehement anti-immigrant legislation is not as fashionable as in past years. These measures have proven to be too expensive and ineffective, Americans care more about real solutions than scapegoating and rhetoric, and anti-immigrant politicians have not been successful on election day.
It’s encouraging to see that most politicians (apparently on both sides of the ideological divide) recognize that indeed, there are many more important issues these days than demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants, legal and undocumented. I also believe that many of them also understand that in this current recession, immigrants — again legal or undocumented — can make significant contributions to the American economy if given the chance.
That is, while many immigrants are disproportionately affected by these tough economic times, if they’re allowed to stay in the U.S., many are more than willing spend their income to help support local businesses, pay federal income and social security taxes, and state sales and gas taxes, to name just a few examples. This is especially true in immigrant-heavy states and cities such as California and Texas, that are being hit especially hard during the recession.
In other words, at a time when our country is struggling, we need everybody to pitch in and help out, regardless of their race, ethnicity, skin color, or immigrant status.
I’m sure you have heard by now about the tragedy in Binghampton, New York this past week, when Jiverly Wong (a Vietnamese American of Chinese ancestry) shot and killed 14 people at the American Civic Association immigrant assistance center, then shot himself. I join others in offering my sincere condolences to the family of those killed and to all affected by these shocking events.
In trying to understand this tragedy from a sociological point of view, I am reminded of just how similar this latest incident of violence is to the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, when troubled Korean American student Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 students and professors before killing himself. Both cases involved a lone gunman who was personally very troubled and perhaps even mentally ill, who felt ridiculed and demeaned by others around him, and who had trouble fitting into mainstream American society.
And of course, both the killers were Asian American.
Inevitably, there will be those who will generalize these and other incidents that involved violence and murder committed by other Americans of Asian descent that have made the news in recent years, and conclude that Asian Americans are inherently socially awkward, emotionally and mentally unstable or inferior, and/or prone to violence. In fact, I felt the same kind of dread that I felt back in 2007 when I heard that the shooter in the Binghampton murders was identified as being of Asian descent.
Let’s put that unfortunate and misguided generalization to rest right now — as the official FBI statistics show, in 2007, in cases where the race/ethnicity of murder offenders is known, those classified as “Other” (the category that includes Asian Americans) represent only 2% of all murder offenders (keeping in mind that Asian Americans comprise 5% of the total U.S. population). More generally, research consistently shows that immigrants actually have lower crime rates than their U.S.-born counterparts (see Reid et al., (2005), “The Immigration-Crime Relationship.” Social Science Research 34:757-780).
Back to more realistic issues, from a sociological point of view, the most interesting difference between the Virginia Tech and Binghampton shootings is the race/ethnicity of the victims. At Virginia Tech, almost all of the victims were White and U.S.-born, whereas here in the Binghampton case, almost all of the victims were non-White and immigrants. Does this mean anything — is this difference significant?
Immigration (both undocumented and legal) is still a very hotly-debated and controversial issue in our society these days, and I’m sure there are some Americans who — consciously or unconsciously — downplay the significance of these Binghampton murder victims by rationalizing that as immigrants, they weren’t “real” or “legitimate” Americans anyway and that therefore, their lives are somehow devalued.
But I hypothesize that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not distinguish between the racial/ethnic identities of the murder victims and that as victims of a senseless tragedy, there is no distinction based on any status.
Ultimately, I actually think that it is this kind of unity of compassion regarding the victims of such tragedies that can serve to bring all Americans closer together. That is, as Americans and as human beings, we can hopefully all share in sympathizing with the families of these senseless shootings. Further, again as Americans, we probably also share the same worries about how the current economic recession will affect our lives and our future, a factor that, along with his apparent mental issues, may have contributed to pushing Jiverly Wong over the edge when he lost his job a few months ago.
In other words, even though we don’t contemplate shooting people after losing our jobs, many of us share the same worries when it comes to how we will pay our bills and save for our children’s future in these tough financial times. Through these kinds of difficulties, a few may unfortunately snap like Wong did, but many more will remember the humanity in us all and the need to help and support others like us so that we can all come out better in the end, like these examples below show us.
I just came across a nifty interactive infographic from the New York Times that tracks geographic settlement patterns of major racial/ethnic immigrant groups throughout the United States by decade, from 1880 to 2000: the Immigration Explorer.
For every group included in the graphic, you will notice that as the decades pass, their settlement patterns become more dispersed throughout the country. In other words, in the past, immigrants would concentrate in the traditional major metropolitan areas of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.
But these days, immigrants have spread out and are settling into new “gateway” areas — areas that aren’t used to having large immigrant populations. And unfortunately, these demographic shifts can and have led to some tensions between old-time residents and the new arrivals. For more research on the new settlement patterns of contemporary immigrants, I recommend books such as:
As Congress and American society in general continue to argue over what’s the best way to stimulate the economy and to start bringing us out of this recessions, in a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman proposes a simple suggestion:
Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: immigration.
“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,†said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate . . . and we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.â€
While his tongue was slightly in cheek, Gupta and many other Indian business people I spoke to this week were trying to make a point that sometimes non-Americans can make best:
“Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.â€
It seems to me that admitting more immigrants to stimulate the economy is one of those rare “bipartisan” suggestions that free-market capitalist conservatives and pro-immigrant liberals can both agree on.
Yes, I understand that the issue is more complicated than simply letting in more immigrants and that there would be a issues surrounding exactly who to let in and with what kind of background and qualifications, and to ensure that these new immigrants will not take existing jobs away from Americans, etc.
But the point is, sometimes the best solutions are the ones few people pay attention to because they’ve been trained to think in conventional terms. As many would argue, it’s this kind of conventional thinking and conventional greed that has put us in this position to begin with. So as the cliche goes, maybe it’s time to think outside the box.
After all, this new administration was elected on the promise of change, wasn’t it?
Many scholars and students of ethnic studies know firsthand that when it comes to studying the history and experiences of different groups of color in American society, much of the work involves filling in the gaps perpetrated over time by focusing our attention almost exclusively on our own racial/ethnic group, such as Asian American Studies.
While this “parochial” focus on our own community certainly has its benefits, the main drawback is that it ignores the interconnections that exist between communities of color, both historically and in today’s contemporary society as it continues to become ever more globalized and transnational.
The notion of Asians living and thriving among U.S. Hispanics as well as the Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Mexico and South America is by no means unfathomable. Nor is it new. Take world politics, for example. Peru elected Alberto Fujimori its president in 1990, an office he held for 10 years. Fujimori’s parents had emigrated from Japan before World War II.
Only about 20 years ago did U.S. scholars begin taking a closer look at the stories of how and why people left the Far East for countries such as Brazil, Cuba and Peru, says Dr. Evelyn Hu-De- Hart, a Brown University professor of history and ethnic studies who is considered a pioneer in the study of Asian-Hispanic intersections. She is also director of Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. . . .
Yet scholars examining such transnational communities and relationships often fend off skepticism from peers in longer-established, clearly defined academic disciplines who wonder about the relevancy of their pursuits, novelty aside. . . .
López, for example, has traveled to Cuba almost annually since 1999 to document the revitalization of Havana’s Chinatown district. Nowadays, Cuba’s regime encourages the Chinese, whose ancestors worked alongside African slaves on 19th-century plantations, to get in better touch with their heritage. The opening of schools teaching traditional Chinese dance, language and art is viewed as an investment in boosting tourism, López says.
As these scholars explore and describe in much more detail in their work, thousands of Asian immigrants came to and eventually settled in countries in Latin and South America, in many cases before the first large-scale immigration to the U.S. started in the mid-1800s. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Asian Americans aren’t aware of these historic patterns because we’re focused on the U.S. and its history.
But as these scholars again describe for us, there is a very rich and vibrant history of the interconnections between Asians and Latinos here in the western hemisphere. Not only that, but as American society, this hemisphere, and the world in general continue to become more globalized and transnational, these connections are likely to become even more significant for years to come — culturally, economically, and politically.
The “second generation” project looked at five groups [in the NYC metro area] — Russians, Dominicans, South Americans, Chinese and West Indians — and compared them with U.S.-born whites, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Researchers found that most in the second generation were fluent in English and working in the mainstream economy.
When they looked at economic and educational achievement, they found that West Indians were doing better, in general, than African-Americans; Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans; and the Chinese and the Russians were doing as well as or better than native-born whites. . . .
Legal immigration is more difficult today, and researchers note that this may well change the rate of assimilation. But for these five groups, “what we really find is a very rapid assimilation and becoming American,” says Mary Waters of Harvard University, another author of the study, titled Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age. . . .
Although Inheriting the City paints an optimistic portrait of this second generation, it has some warnings about the situation facing native-born minorities. The researchers also say the children of undocumented immigrants tend to do worse and have a tougher time assimilating. Because legal immigration is tougher to come by today, researchers say they wonder whether the path for the next “second generation” will be as smooth.
Although I have not read the Inheriting the City book, given my high regard for the expertise of the book’s authors, I have no doubt that it is a very informative and interesting look at this ongoing issue of assimilation among contemporary immigrants.
