I found Chapter 5, regarding race and prejudices that exist, to be both extremely interesting and shocking. I had always considered racism to be a thing of the past, a mere distant and painful memory of the difficult fight for equality for African Americans that took center stage during the mid 20th century in the United States. This chapter has extended my realm of understanding and thought, beginning with the notion that perceptions of race have changed. This is especially notable with the fact that at one time, Jews and Italians were not considered to be “white.” They were considered to be inferior races, looked down upon as compared to the white Anglo-Saxons. I became upset while reading what the horrific stereotypes of the so-called impure Jews and Italians, published by well-known American social scientists. Edward A. Ross spoke of European Jews as “moral cripples, their souls warped and dwarfed by iron circumstance…” along with his statement about the two groups that, “It is unthinkable that so many persons with rooked faces, coarse mouths, bad noses…can mingle their heredity with ours without making personal beauty yet more rare…” The existence and popularity of one particular book in the 1920s, The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, was particularly disturbing. The main idea of the book was that “American stock would be mongrelized by inferior Europeans such as the Alpines from central Europe, Mediterraneans, and, worst of all, Jews.” Moreover, the New York Times and other popular publications often used arguments from Grant’s theories as the basis for articles!!
Since Jews and Italians are both now considered to be “white,” the country has seem to forgotten all about this inferior status as new immigrants are given this title. In 2011, we are still drawing distinctive racial lines that are not logical nor based in any reason. Although we have thrown away the idea of the “non-white” European, the incoming West Indian population are not so lucky. Foner makes the point that West Indians, although very different from African Americans, “often find themselves lumped with American blacks.” She interestingly puts the idea forth that “Given the realities of American race relations, this focus is not surprising–but that is exactly the point.” She goes on to describe how there have been various occurrences of violence against the West Indians in addition to instances discrimination even on an airplane because of the fact that they look black. This says a lot about the United States as a nation, especially because in the West Indies, “blackness is not…a barrier to social acceptance or upward mobility,” which is how it should be.
Foner goes on to discuss more recently arriving immigrant waves of Hispanics and Asians. While both groups are put in the category of “non-white,” the Asian American people have been coined the “model minority” and are therefore held in higher esteem, in some cases, than Hispanic people who are placed in the spectrum of somewhere between black and white. This view is partially due to the fact that so many Asian immigrants have been successful in American schools and have become the “proto-whites.” It is amazing to me that something like this could affect how this nation thinks of the Asian people as a race; this is further proof that the color lines and racial idea that develop do not have any true basis or logic behind them.
I feel very strongly about the fact that the only way racial lines will be erased is with widespread education on subjects such as these. If we can look back at the way we have discriminated so wrongfully and blindly in the past with the first wave of immigrants, there is surely hope that we (as the young students and future educators of the nation) can turn this pattern around somehow.
