Thảo luận nhóm TMU the muslim immigration in america with its influences on politics and the attitude of american

Definition of ethnic Ethnic is used for referring to people that have the same culture and traditionsfrom a particular ethnic group within a larger or dominant national or cultural group

CONTENTS

The population of the United States includes a large variety of ethnic groupscoming from many races, nationalities, and religions such as English, Irish, German,Dutch, Italian, African, Asian and etc Most of these groups have experienced variousdegrees of prejudice and discrimination as they have gone through the process ofassimilation and managed to achieve social mobility Today, U.S society ismulticultural, although the extent to multiculturalism carries significant politicalrepercussions It makes the United States has a unique culture that is interesting to bediscussed The topics below will discuss how those races assimilate to the ‘BigCulture’ and describe how several groups became part of U.S society, as well as CivilRights movement in the United States

I. Definition

1. Definition of ethnic

Ethnic is used for referring to people that have the same culture and traditionsfrom a particular ethnic group (within a larger or dominant national or cultural group).Individuals who identify with a particular ethnic group share the values, interests,language and confine their interpersonal relations to group membership

II. Different term to indicate America

1. Melting Pot

Literal meaning: The Melting Pot is the original fondue restaurant where guestscan enjoy several fondue cooking styles and a variety of unique entrees, salads, and

Figurative meaning: As we mentioned in Chapter 1, some have described theUnited States as a 'melting pot where various racial and ethnic groups have beencombined into one culture.

The Melting Pot was a welcoming place for those of European descent Theywere the broth (or the base) that constituted what everyone else had to conform to Itwould be easy for one to distinguish between a broth and a non-broth item If youwanted to fit in and be a full member of American culture, you hoped to become thebroth This can be seen within the Irish

The Irish were initially big pieces, out of place in this melting pot As time went

on, however, the Irish were faced with an enticing offer If they chose to align with theDemocratic Party and assimilate, they would be allowed to melt into the pot fully and

be treated as equals and “white.” Their assimilation into this pot would end theiroppression in America and allow them to claim a sense of belonging in the society.The blacks, on the other hand, were chunks that could not be melted into this pot

at all They were bones perhaps, something that one did not want in the pot to beginwith They were not meant to fit into society, just to be used as slaves and considered

adoption of the customs of the foreign land he sets foot on and the rejection of hisEnglish identity in the process.

it more accurately and frankly addresses the injustices of the time, instead of sugarcoating it in the way that the Salad Bowl attempts

The "Salad Bowl" theory basically calls for us to celebrate our diversity alongwith our oneness

Example: Since 1776, an enormous amount of racial and ethnic assimilation hastaken place in the United States, yet some groups continue to feel a strong sense ofseparateness from the culture as a whole Many of these groups are really bicultural

That is, they consider themselves Americans, but they also wish to retain the languageand the cultural Traditions of their original culture.

Characteristics: People are more tolerant of other:

• Better for immigrants

• People are allowed to practice their own culture

• People are more likely to learn English

• People feel welcomed

• There is more recognition to minority groups

• The ideas from diversity of view-points will strengthen the host country

• A greater chance that the immigrants will fight for their host country

• Attempts to create unity through differences

• Provides the public sense of free speech

• Democratic

• Can help separate conflicting groups

• Economically beneficial to immigrants and the host country

Example: In Canada, however, the cultural mosaic is present, where any and allcultures to enter Canada are embraced and have a separate and respected place in theculture In a mosaic, all different cultures are present and recognized in differentaspects of society

III The establishment of Dominant Culture

1 What is Dominant Culture

In societies where there are different kinds of people, one group is usually larger

or more powerful than the others Generally, societies consist of a dominant culture,subcultures, and countercultures

A dominant culture is a cultural practice that is dominant within a particularpolitical, social or economic entity, in which multiple cultures are present It may refer

to a language, religion/ritual, social value and/or social custom These features areoften a norm for an entire society It achieves dominance by being perceived aspertaining to a majority of the population and having a significant presence ininstitutions relating to communication, education, artistic expression, law, governmentand business The concept of "dominant culture" is generally used in academicdiscourse in fields such as sociology, anthropology and cultural studies

The culture that is dominant within a particular geopolitical entity can changeover time in response to internal or external factors, but one is usually very resilientand able to reproduce itself effectively from generation to generation In a polyculturalsociety, various cultures are celebrated and respected equally A dominant culture can

be promoted deliberately and by the suppression of minority cultures or subcultures

2 The census of America population

2.1 Population structure:

In practice, the first census of the new nation, conducted in 1790, counted about

4 million people, most of whom were white

Of the white citizens, more than eight out of ten traced their ancestry back toEngland African Americans made up a surprising 20 percent of the population, an all-

time high There were close to 700,000 slaves and about 60,000 “free Negroes.” Only

a few Native Americans who paid taxes were included in the census count, but thetotal native American population was probably about one million

2.2 The Majority rule

It was the white population that had the greater numbers, the money, and thepolitical power in the new nation, and therefore this majority soon defined what thedominant culture would be

At the time of the American Revolution, the white population was largelyEnglish in origin, Protestant, and middle-class Such Americans are sometimesreferred to as “WASPs” (white Anglo-Saxon protestants); however, many people nowconsider this an insulting term

White Anglo-Saxon protestants

Their characteristics became the standard for judging other groups Those having

a different religion (such as the Irish Catholics), or those speaking a different language(such as the Germans, Dutch, and Swedes), were in the minority and would bedisadvantaged unless they became assimilated

3 The Dominant Culture grew out of the Nation's History

The Dominant Culture in a society is the group whose members are in themajority or who wield more power than other groups In the United States, thedominant culture is that of white, middle-class, Protestant people of northern Europeandescent There are more white people here than African Americans, Latinos, AsianAmericans, or Native Americans, and there are more middle-class people than thereare rich or poor people

Differences between rich and poor

The dominant American culture that grew out of the nation’s early history, thenwas English-speaking, western European, Protestant, and middle-class in character Itwas this dominant culture that established which became the traditional valuesdescribed by de Tocqueville in the early 1830s Moreover, Americans believed thatthese newcomers would probably give strong support to the basic values of thedominant culture, such as freedom, equality of opportunity, and the desire to work hardfor a higher material standard of living

IV. The assimilation of different groups of immigrants into the main culture.

1 The assimilation of Non- Protestant and Non- Western European.

1.1 Overview

America used to be a colony of Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Britain.These people soon brought their culture to America Through a process of culturalexchange and integration, the unique cultural identity of the American was formed.Until the late 19th and the early 20th century, a third wave of migration broke out

in the United States, reaching the number of millions These people mainly came frompoverty-stricken nations of southern and eastern Europe They spoke languages otherthan English, and large numbers of them were Catholics or Jews The immigrants,therefore, were accepted in the United States with some threats

1.2 Demographic data of the immigrants arriving the US in the late 19th – the early 20th

Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans migrated to the United States,peaking between 1881 and 1885 when a million Germans settled primarily in theMidwest Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5 million Irish enteredAmerica Before 1845 most Irish immigrants were Protestants After 1845, IrishCatholics began arriving in large numbers, largely driven by the Great Famine

After 1880 larger steam-powered oceangoing ships replaced sailing ships, whichresulted in lower fares and greater immigrant mobility In addition, the expansion of arailroad system in Europe made it easier for people to reach oceanic ports to boardships Meanwhile, farming improvements in Southern Europe and the Russian Empire

created surplus labor Young people between the ages of 15 to 30 were predominantamong newcomers This wave of migration, constituting the third episode in thehistory of U.S immigration, may be better referred to as a flood of immigrants, asnearly 25 million Europeans made the long trip Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles,and others speaking Slavic languages made up the bulk of this immigration 2.5 to 4million Jews were among them.

1.3 Anti-Catholicism in the US in the late 19th century

Between 1840 and 1924, over 30 million European immigrants relocated to theUnited States Many were Catholic, hailing from as far North as Ireland, as far South

as Sicily and as far east as Poland In a country established principally by speaking Protestants who traced their ancestry to Northern Europe, these newcomersoften met with hostility and derision From the burning of Boston’s CharlestownConvent in 1834 and the rise of the single-issue, anti-immigrant Know Nothing party

English-in the 1850s (an organization that, for a brief moment, controlled dozens ofcongressional seats and enjoyed extensive influence within the political anti-slaverycoalition)—to the No Irish Need Apply signs of the 1890s—immigrant Catholics facedthe brunt of Protestant America’s rage

As the immigrant landscape grew more complicated in the late 19th century,social scientists and politicians began attempting to classify Americans with greaterprecision Whiteness, it now seemed, was a matter of degree, and Europeans fell intocategories like “Anglo Saxon,” “Celtic,” “Hebrew” and “Asiatic.” Importantly, thismove toward racial classification drew heavily on the emerging fields of modernbiology and chemistry

In 1911 the famous Dillingham Commission on Immigration attempted to reducethe mass of new immigrant groups to a simple five-tier racial scheme (Caucasian,Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay and American) But it wasn’t always so simple InVolume 9 of its lengthy report, otherwise entitled A Dictionary of Races or Peoples,the commission backtracked and acknowledged that the U.S Bureau of Immigration

“recognizes 45 races or peoples among immigrants coming to the United States, and ofthese 36 are indigenous to Europe.”

Critically, many scientists and social scientists (the Dillingham Commissionexperts among them) agreed that race was determinative of behavior, intelligence andphysical endowment, and that racial groups could be arranged in a hierarchicalfashion The Dictionary of Races or Peoples, for instance, characterized Bohemians as

“the most advanced of all” Slavic race groups The Southern Italian, on the other hand,

it deemed “an individualist having little adaptability to highly organized society.”Representative of this popular school of thought was the Station for the Study ofEvolution, a think tank established by the Carnegie Institution in 1904 at Cold SpringHarbor (Long Island) The institute’s director, Charles Davenport, made it his life’swork to document the relationship between race and comportment “The idea of a

‘melting pot,’” he wrote, “belongs to a pre-Mendelian age Now we recognize thatcharacters are inherited as units and do not readily break up.” From arguing that racewas both determinative and qualitative, it was no great leap of logic to suggest someracial groups were better fit for citizenship than others

Senator Ira Hersey of Maine lamented, “We have thrown open wide our gatesand through them have come other alien races, of alien blood, from Asia and southern

Europe … with their strange and pagan rites, their babble of tongues.” (When he spoke

of “pagan rites,” Hersey almost assuredly meant both the Latin Mass and the Hebrewservice.) Congressman Earl Michener of Michigan only echoed conventional wisdomwhen he argued, “the Nordic [race] laid the foundations of society in America,” and tocompromise Nordic genius was pure race suicide

1.4 Anti-Catholicism in the US in the early 20th century

In the early 20th century, the backlash against Catholic and Jewish immigrantsfound its most powerful expression in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, an organizationborn in the 1860s in violent opposition to the emancipation of black slaves

Unlike the original Klan, the new organization sought a national profile andidentified several groups—not just African- American—as alien threats to family andnation: Catholics, Jews, immigrants, “new women,” bootleggers, criminals and—ofcourse—black Americans In effect, the Klan became the sworn enemy of all personswho threatened, whether by heritage, race or behavior, the imagined ideals that had sorecently held a nation of small, Protestant communities together Above all, the Klantouted “one hundred percent Americanism” as an antidote to the social and culturaldecay that seemed to be rotting away the core of American values

Klan members often infused their reflexive anti-Catholicism with a voyeuristicinterest in the Catholic Church’s rumored (and wholly fictitious) violations of sexualpropriety Klan literature chronicled the delight that nuns took in whipping young girls

It claimed that members of the Knights of Columbus vowed to “burn, waste, boil, flay,strangle and bury alive [non-Catholic] heretics; rip open the stomachs and wombs oftheir women and crash their infants’ heads against the walls in order to annihilate their

execrable race.” Popular Klan lecturers like Helen Jackson, an “escaped nun,” regaledlisteners with tales of carnal relationships between priests and nuns and forcedabortions within convent walls.

Notably, the Klan was not just an agent of rural backlash As Catholics quicklycame to forge demographic majorities and supermajorities in American cities, theorganization thrived in many urban areas as an agent of resistance to rising Catholicpolitical influence

1.5 Americans' help to the immigrants

Firstly, Americans tried to meet what they saw as a threat to their values byoffering English instruction for the new immigrants and citizenship classes to teachthem basic American beliefs The immigrants, however, often felt that their Americanteachers disapproved of the traditions of their homeland Moreover, learning aboutAmerican values gave them little help in meeting their most important needs, such asemployment, food, and a place to live

Far more helpful to the new immigrants were the “political bosses” of the largercities of the northeastern United States, where most of the immigrants first arrived.Those bosses saw many of the practical needs of the immigrants and were moreaccepting of the different homeland traditions

Many scholars believe that the political bosses performed an important function

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries They helped to assimilate largenumbers of new immigrants into the larger American culture by finding them jobs andhousing, in return for their political support Later the bosses also helped the sons and

daughters of these immigrants find employment, but the second generation usually hadthe advantage of growing up speaking English.

The fact that the United States had a rapidly expanding economy at the turn ofthe century made it possible for these new immigrants, often with the help of thebosses, to better their standard of living in the United States As a result of these newopportunities and new rewards, immigrants came to accept most of the values of thelarger American culture and were in turn accepted by the great majority of Americans.The integration of immigrants and their children contributed to Americaneconomic vitality and American vibrant and ever-changing culture The US offeredopportunities to immigrants and their children to better themselves and to be fullyincorporated into American society and in exchange immigrants became Americans -embracing an American identity and citizenship, protecting the country throughservice in its military, fostering technological innovation, harvesting its crops, andenriching everything from the nation's cuisine to its universities, music, and art

2. The African- American Experience

The process of assimilation in the United States has been much more successfulfor white ethnic groups than for nonwhite ethnic groups Of the nonwhite ethnicgroups, Americans of African descent has the greatest difficulty in becomingassimilated into the larger culture

In the mid-1500s, European mariners started bringing black Africans to America

as slaves This forced migration was unique in American history

But the slave trade was not new to Europe or Africa In the eighth century,Moorish merchants traded humans as merchandise throughout the Mediterranean Inaddition, many West African peoples kept slaves West African slaves were usuallyprisoners of war, criminals, or the lowest-ranked members of caste systems.

An engraving depicting the 1840 convention of the Anti-Slavery Society, held inLondon, people attended from around the world, including from the U.S

The capture and sale of Africans for the American slave markets were barbaricand often lethal Two out of five West African captives died on the march to theAtlantic seacoast where they were sold to European slavers On board the slavevessels, they were chained below decks in coffin-sized racks An estimated one-third

of these unfortunate individuals died at sea

In America, they were sold at auction to owners, who wanted them primarily asplantation workers Slave owners could punish slaves harshly They could break upfamilies by selling off family members

Despite the hardships, slaves managed to develop a strong cultural identity Onplantations, all adults looked after all children Although they risked separation, slavesfrequently married and maintained strong family ties Introduced to Christianity, theydeveloped their own forms of worship

Spirituals, the music of worship, expressed both slave endurance and religiousbelief Slaves frequently altered the lyrics of spirituals to carry the hope of freedom or

to celebrate resistance

In time, African culture enriched much of American music, theater, and dance.African rhythms found their way into Christian hymns and European marches The

banjo evolved from an African stringed instrument The sound of the blues is nothingmore than a combination of African and European musical scales Vaudeville waspartially an extension of song-and-dance forms first performed by black street artists.

2.1 Abolition and Civil War

In the 17th and 18th centuries, some blacks gained their freedom, acquiredproperty, and gained access to American society Many moved to the North, whereslavery, although still legal, was less of a presence African- American, both slave andfree also made significant contributions to the economy and infrastructure working onroads, canals, and construction of cities

By the early 1800s, many whites and free blacks in Northern states began to callfor the abolition of slavery Frederick Douglass, a young black laborer, was taught toread by his master’s wife in Baltimore In 1838, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts,where he became a powerful writer, editor, and lecturer for the growing abolitionistmovement

Frederick Douglass knew that slavery was not the South’s burden to bear alone.The economy of the industrial North depended on the slave-based agriculture of theSouth Douglass challenged his Northern audience to take up the cause againstSouthern slavery “Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice,embodied in the Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” he asked “What to theAmerican slave is your Fourth of July?”

When the Civil War began, many Northern blacks volunteered to fight for theUnion Some people expressed surprise at how fiercely black troops fought But black

soldiers were fighting for more than restoring the Union They were fighting to liberatetheir people.

2.2 Reconstruction and Reaction

With the defeat of the Confederacy, Northern troops remained in the South toensure the slaves newly won freedom Blacks started their own churches and schools,purchased land, and voted themselves into office By 1870, African- American hadsent 22 representatives to Congress

But many Southerners soon reacted to black emancipation Supported by thesurviving white power structure, Ku Klux Klan members organized terrorist raids andlynchings They burned homes, schools, and churches

When Northern troops left in 1877, the white power structure returned Within acouple of decades, this power structure succeeded in completely suppressing blacks.African- American was excluded from voting Southern states wrote Jim Crow lawsthat segregated blacks from white society Blacks lived under constant threat ofviolence

2.3 The Great Migration North

Beginning in the 1890s, many blacks started moving The North World War Iopened many factory jobs In the 1920s, strict new laws drastically cut Europeanimmigration The drop in immigration created a demand for industrial workers in theNorthern cities Southern blacks, still oppressed by segregation, began to migratenorthward in increasing numbers Young black men eagerly took unskilled jobs inmeat packing plants, steel mills, and on auto assembly lines in Chicago, Omaha, andDetroit

Black workers unquestionably improved their lives in Northern cities Indoorplumbing, gas heat, and nearby schools awaited many arrivals from the rural South.Discrimination also met them.

Yet black urban culture blossomed Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Jelly RollMorton, and King Oliver brought their music north from New Orleans In thesophisticated urban atmosphere of Chicago, these jazz pioneers took advantage ofimprovements in musical instruments and new recording technologies to becomecelebrities in the Roaring ‘20s, also known as the Jazz Age

Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant, preached black pride, racial separation,and a return to Africa By the early 1920s, Garvey had an estimated 2 millionfollowers, most of them Northern city-dwellers

Harlem, an uptown New York City neighborhood, drew black migrants from theSouth Black commerce and culture thrived in Harlem After World War I, a group ofblack writers, artists, and intellectuals gathered there Like Marcus Garvey, manysought cultural identity in their African origins Unlike Garvey, however, they had nodesire to return to Africa They found creative energy in the struggle to be blacks andAmericans

This gathering of black artists and philosophers was called the HarlemRenaissance Langston Hughes, a black novelist and poet, used the language of theghetto and the rhythms of jazz to describe the African-American experience Jazzcontinued its development as a uniquely American art form in Harlem, whereprominent nightclubs like the Cotton Club featured great jazz composers like DukeEllington and Fletcher Henderson Their music lured whites uptown to Harlem to