美国社会与文化chapter 3

chapter 3 Human Resources: Minority People in the United States Apart from the dominant white population, particularly WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), there are many other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. The oldest Americans, the Indians- for example, had lived on the North American continent for centuries before Europeans came to this New World in the 1500s. Likewise, people of Hispanic origin were living there before settlers arrived from Europe and established their settlements along the East Coast in the early 1600s. Then, due to the shortage of labor force, Africans were brought to the United States to labor in the fields and provide menial service. When the West was opened up for exploration and development, Asians were swept into the "Gold Rush" in the mid-19"1 century, only to find themselves not digging the "gold mountain" but working for the transcontinental railway construction as coolies. In short, from the very beginning, non-White Americans have been an integral part of the labor force that has turned the United States from an agricultural society into a high​ly industrialized country. However, for as long as the nation's history, these minority groups in the United States have been forced into inferior position in almost every category, legally, politically, economically, social​ly, and culturally. As a result, their experiences in the United States have not been the same as those of European immigrants. If Euro​pean immigrants and their descendents can look back with pride at their glorious past in the making of the nation, minority people and their descendents will have to recall from their bitter memories their suffering, humiliation, discrimination and oppression in this "all-men- arc-created-equal" country. And, while their contributions to the growth of the country have been in good proportion to their population, what they have received has been far from equal and fair. In this sense- the experiences of the minority people in the United States arc not just different, but distinct and unique in and of themselves. African Americans Not until 2000, when the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Hispanics/ Latinos outnumbered Blacks for the first time in American histo​ry, had African Americans been regarded as the largest minority group in the United States. According to the 2000 census, there were about 34,658,190 African Americans living in the United States, representing about 12.3% of the total population. The sheer number of African Americans in the land is quite significant and this somehow helps them figure prominently in the present-day Ameri​can political, social, economic, and cultural lift. Unlike other ethnic groups that came to the United States more or less voluntarily (with the exception of American Indians, who in​habited in North America before the first white settlers arrived). African Americans were brought to the "New World" in the early 1600s against their will. They were at first small in number and used as indentured servants. By the late 1600s, however, permanent en​slavement had become the fate of these colored people from the Caribbean and Africa, and their status was subsequently relegated to that of property. Due to the severe shortage of labor supply in the then vast land of wilderness and the huge profits that colonists gained from slave labor, white settlers from then onward were ac​tively engaged in the notorious slave trade. In this way, the white slave traders managed lo ship to the "New World" thousands of tons of "human cargo" in chains. By the time of the American Revolu​tion, black slaves accounted for about 20 percent of the total popu​lation of the colonies. Black slaves were brought to the United States primarily to be used as agricultural labor force in the South, growing tobacco, rice, and later on, cotton. In the North, as the climate is not suitable for plantation crops, relatively few slaves were used there. So, for a long time in American history, slavery had been a regional issue, confined mostly to the South. By the late 1700s, as tobacco and rice became less profitable as cash crops, dependence on slave labor di​minished accordingly, prompting some people to claim prematurely that slavery was on its way to its natural death. However, the new technology in the cotton industry — the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 — injected fresh life into slavery, making it possible for plantation owners to increase their profits if they could get more slave cotton pickers to keep their cotton gins in full opera​tion. Consequently, in the early 1800s, the growing of cotton be​came the work of 60 percent of all slaves in the United States. From its inception, slave system met with resistance and oppo​sition from both whites and blacks. Some based their opposition on moral grounds,, while others on political consideration. Still others worried about the economic, social and military problems created by the presence of a large number of racially distinct people in bond​age, and wanted to spare themselves such problems. During and af​ter the American Revolution, for example, northern states began banning slavery, and southern stales started passing laws to amelio​rate the harsh treatment of slaves. However, as slavery was such a profitable economic institution in the South, particularly when the South became "the Cotton Kingdom" — not only of the United States, but of the world as well, white Southerners became increasingly reluctant to abolish slavery. By I860, the slave population had grown to just under 4 million. Meanwhile, as slavery became part and parcel of southern way of life and got embedded in its social structure, southern whites tightened their control over black slaves and exploited them to the maximum degree possible. Laws were made to regulate the conduct of slaves (the so-called black codes), and opposition to the institu​tion, cither in the form of abolitionist literature or in the form of slaves' assembly, incurred zero tolerance from the ruling class in the South. Tension grew high between whites and blacks. In response to the iron-fisted approach of white Southerners, black slaves waged uprisings and rebellions across the South to demonstrate their un​quenchable will for freedom and self-auto no my. Southern whites, in turn, increased their repression, leaving bloodshed sprinkling on the soil of southern plantations. It was not until the conclusion of the Civil War that the whole slave issue was finally brought to an end. However, although the Civil War shattered the chains on slaves, it by no means brought freedom and equality to the freed slaves. Southern whites, accustomed to conceiving blacks as less than human beings, resented not only emancipation, but also any behavior, words or attitudes by blacks implying common humanity or common rights. Indeed, the general attitude of white Southern​ers toward blacks was aptly summed up by a colonel in 1865: "To kill a Negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a Negro woman they do not think fornication; to take property away from a Negro they do not consider robbery. " Partly because of this racist mentali​ty, and partly in order to ''redeem" themselves from humiliation they suffered in the lost war, white Southerners devised a variety of ways to keep blacks under their control. Economically, they worked out the cropsharing system, by which blacks were kept in constant, if not permanent, debt. Politically, they passed laws that virtually disfranchised blacks in local, state, and national political process. Socially, they not only segregated blacks in all public places (.known as "the Jim Crow Laws"), bat also terrified blacks by organizing such violent groups as Ku Klux Klan. In short, white Southerners wanted to return freed slaves to their former status without actually restoring the slave system. In the face of this backlash by southern whites, blacks respon​ded in different ways. Some went around their black folks to urge them to get united to fight for political rights and social equality. Others, in despair, simply got themselves packed up and headed for the Upper South or the North in search of a better life. In the latter part of nineteenth century, as industrialization gradually made itself felt in the South, more and more blacks found themselves driven out of the land, their labor being replaced by such machines as tractors and combines. Consequently, blacks left home in large numbers and migrated to urban areas in the South, North, and the West. When World War I broke out and drew the United States into it, northern industries suddenly found their labor force drained out of the workshop and fighting in the war fronts. As the flow of im​migrants from Europe stopped as a result of the war, the shortage in labor supply in most of northern industries had to be solved by at​tracting southern blacks to the North. Subsequently, driven by the converging forces of "push" and "pull" — the South pushing blacks out of its region with its terrible economic situations and awful po​litical conditions and the North pulling blacks into its area with its attractive political freedom and abundant economic opportunities, hundreds of thousands of blacks bid farewell to their hometown and poured into the northern and western regions. These areas, in the eyes of southern blacks, were nothing less than "the Promised Land". With the outbreak of the Second World War, a much larger exodus of blacks occurred, and most of them settled in the industrial cities of the North and West. It is estimated that 1. 2 million black Americans left the South in the 1940s. Once in the North and West, while blacks did obtain numerous benefits such as enjoying voting rights, acquiring industrial skills, receiving education, and having more job opportunities, these bene​fits of urban life came with a high price tag. For one thing, the black migrants had to make numerous emotional and cultural adjust​ments in new surroundings. For another, northern whites, while more liberal-minded than their southern counterparts, were by no means immune from racial prejudice. So, at the same time when these black migrants found their life improved, they also found themselves increasingly segregated in schools, neighborhoods, and public accommodations. And. as more and more blacks concentrat​ed in these racially segregated places, the living quarters of blacks in the North began to deteriorate, turning urban black communities in​to ghettoes and slums. Such familiar urban problems as poverty, un​employment, overcrowded housing, violence and crime became in​creasingly associated with black communities. In the face of the indifference of the federal government to​ward the "black problems" and the pervasiveness of white racism in the North as well as in the South, black Americans in the 1950s started their legal struggle for desegregation. Led by the National Associa​tion for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), black Americans launched fierce attacks on the separate-but-equal doc​trine. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared that ra​cially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, because they did not provide equal educational opportunities for black Americans. Inspired by this decision, black Americans decided to try to end racial segregation and racial discrimination in all areas of American life, starting what later became known as the Civil Rights Movement. Beginning with Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, and March on Washington in 1963. black Americans engaged themselves in one battle after another across the country. Out of this Civil Rights Movement, there emerged such black leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. In the view of the former, African Americans' civil rights should be achieved primarily through nonviolent tactics and direct protest action. To the latter, however, equality and liberty should be in no way comprised and, therefore, all necessary means should be resorted to in order to attain the goals set by the Civil Rights Movement. In the first half of the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was largely dominated by Martin Luther King's ideology, and blacks were mainly using non-violent action to crash "the wall of segregation". To give him due credit, King-led movement achieved considerable success for the black people's civil rights, the most important of which included the passage of two acts: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. However, as the Movement progressed, especially when blacks shifted their demands to social and economic equality, the U.S. government first dragged its feet along, and then simply dis​played its displeasure, blaming blacks for asking for too much. As black Americans would not settle for anything less than a full citi​zenship, tension between whites and blacks started to rise. With the federal government retreating its ground on racial issue, and with the conservative political force gradually raising its head, non-violent action was now making little headway. Consequently, Mal​colm X's advocacy of violence for violence gained ground in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly among the black urban youth. The late 1960s witnessed dozens of race riots in American cities, when frustrated black youth fought street wars with white police, giving rise to growing militancy on the part of black radicals. On the surface, violent and non-violent action appears to be contradic​tory, but in reality, they act like yin-yang dualism, supplementing each other in their struggle for freedom and equality. The non-vio​lent tactics, for example, played along the line of American liberal tradition, helping to win sympathy and support from liberal whites. The violent action, on the other hand, more effectively drove home the seriousness of "black problems", compelling the dominant class to confront the race issues involving discrimination and segregation. In their own ways, both efforts had contributed to the black struggle for racial equality in the United States. Such efforts have brought about sustained success for African Americans. In 1969, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of all public schools, and later approved measures to force integra​tion, such as racial quotas, the groupings of non-contiguous school districts and busing in order to achieve racial balance in the schools. More importantly, the civil rights laws of the 1960s eventually helped to reduce the amount of white prejudice toward black people in all parts of the country. The number of African Americans attending the nation's colleges and universities, holding elective public office, and earning higher incomes increased dramatically in the late 1960s and 1970s. Black political figures have now taken on national prom​inence and black voters have been courted by all serious politicians at local, state and national levels. In 1984 and 1988, for example, Jesse Jackson, a black leader who had worked with Martin Luther King in the 1960s, became the first African American to run for the president of the United States. Although he did not win, he re​ceived significant national attention and greatly influenced the poli​cies of the Democratic party. Additionally, many African Americans arc now mayors of major cities and members of Con​gress. They hold offices in all levels of government. In 1994, for in​stance, there were 7,000 black officials in the South, and about for​ty black members of U. S. Congress. Equally important is the change of white people's perception of blacks. In 1983,for example, Congress overwhelmingly passed, and the president singed, a law, making the birthday of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. a national holiday. This was done, in part, to symbolize America's commitment to completing the promise of equality announced in the Declaration of Independ​ence, and, in part, to give recognition to the great contributions made by black Americans to the United States. Also symbolically, perhaps, more than 80 percent of whiles said in the late 1990s that they would vote a black for the president of the United States, someone like General Colin Powell, for example. All this indicates that African Americans as a whole have made considerable progress over the past forty years. However, although there are now black sports and entertain​ment stars, black university professors, black doctors, black law​yers, black entrepreneurs, black reporters and a sizable black mid​dle class, there is still a gulf between the races. Although African Americans represent about 13 percent of the population in the Unit​ed States, they are still grossly underrepresented in Congress and other government agencies. More importantly, while more blacks complete high school today, the median income of a married black man working full lime is 23 percent behind a married white man. Segregation and discrimination arc against the law, but residential patterns create largely segregated neighborhood schools in many ur​ban areas, making busing plans virtually impossible to operate. It is estimated that at present half the whites in the United States live in the suburbs, but only a fourth of the blacks do so. Many blacks are trapped in cycles of poverty, unemployment, violence, and despair in the inner city. It is reported that one in five young black males now has a criminal record, over 40 percent of all black children live in poverty and many have only one parent. Besides, seventy percent of black children are born to unmarried women. For these and many other reasons, some African Americans have given up on ever having equal treatment within a society domi​nated by whites. In the 1990s, Louis Farrakhan, a new black Muslim leader, advocated that blacks separate themselves from the hostile white culture. In the fall of 1995, Farrakhan and others organized the "Million Man March" of African American men and boys in Washington, D. C. The goal of the march was to gather together re​sponsible fathers and sons who would demonstrate positive role models for African Americans, and who would inspire people to take leadership roles and make a difference in their home communi​ties. Although some view Farrakhan as an extremist, his angry voice has a certain appeal to many African Americans, particularly young blacks, who are now searching for a separate African American identity. As Nathan Glazer, an expert on assimilation, points out, of all minority groups, blacks have had more difficulty being ac​cepted by the white majority. Therefore, racial and cultural separa​tism is a stronger force with them than with other racial and ethnic groups such as Hispanics, Native Americans, or Asians. Latinos/ Hispanics The era that began with World War TI witnessed Latino presence in the United States, whose importance is revealed in the immigration figures. Eased on the census records of 1990, there were more than 22 million Hispanics living in the United States in the early 1990s. The figure was no doubt understated, because many Latinos who had illegally arrived in the United States were not counted by the federal government. Ten years later, as was expected by many peo​ple, the Latino population went up to 35.3 million by 2000, replac​ing African Americans as the largest minority group in the United States. "The implications for this country are enormous," one for​mer federal official observed. "Not too far in the future," he pre​dicted, "many areas will have Spanish-speaking majorities, and Lat​in American culture will make a very deep impression on the main​stream of U.S. society." Those commonly called Latinos (or Hispanics, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) include the descendants of Native-American peoples. African slaves, immigrants from European nations (partic​ularly Spain) and Asia, and mixtures of these peoples. In this sense, a Spanish language and cultural background is the inexact basis for calling people with ethnic origins in the Caribbean, Central and South America Latinos, for the term does not apply to people from countries in the Americas that have been influenced by other European cultures, such as Brazil and Haiti. Still, it has been accepted by Americans to use such a term to refer to American residents from such countries as Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba Colombia, Ecuador, and Dominican. Although large Hispanic communities exist in practically every major city in the United States, different groups predominate in dif​ferent areas. For example, Puerto Ricans are most significant in New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Cubans, on the other hand, have a large presence in Miami and New Orleans. And, Mex​icans figure most prominently in Los Angeles. San Antonio, San Francisco, Settle, Detroit, and Denver. Dominicans, Ecuadorians and Colombians tend to set up their communities on the East Coast, sometimes exclusively and sometimes mixing up with other Hispanic groups. For our discussion, the largest three Hispanic groups are given as follows. Mexicans Among the Latinos, Mexican Americans are the largest and most prominent one, taking up more than 60 percent of Latino popula​tion in the United States. Most of Mexican Americans, about 80 percent, live in the southwestern states, the majority in urban are​ as, and the rest live in other parts of the country, particularly in such large mid-western cities as Chicago. They constitute approxi​mately 25 percent of the population in California, about 30 percent in Texas and Colorado, and nearly 45 percent in New Mexico. Some Mexican Americans, especially those in New Mexico and southern Colorado, can trace their ancestry back many centuries, because most of what is now the heartland of Mexican American communities in the five states of the southwest belonged to Spain, and then to Mexico. It was in 1848 that this area was annexed by the United States, and people living there suddenly changed their na​tionality from Mexicans to Mexican Americans. However, the vast majority of Mexican Americans came to the United Stales as labor force on their own. At the turn of the 20th century, the southwest turned itself into a booming region — the southwestern railroads, the expansion of cotton planting in Texas, Arizona, and California, and the irrigation of farmlands in the Im​perial and San Joaquin valleys in California. All these industries needed cheap labor, and the Mexican worker just provided it. They worked as common laborers on the railroad tracks, in the mines, for the fruit crops, and in the numerous packing plants on the West Coast. Some Mexicans found jobs as cowboys, shepherds and ranch hands, and hundreds of thousands more were employed as mobile laborers, who would pick up the crops quickly in one area and then move on to other areas and harvest whatever else was ripe. When the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, an increasingly larger number of Mexicans left their own country and came to settle in the United States. This group of Mexican newcomers mostly found work in agriculture rather than on the railroads. During World War T and World War II, as European immigration fell drastically and American residents went off to war, the expanding agricultural acres and war-effort machines called for more hands. Mexico- being so close to the United States, again became the ready sources for the U. S. to tap. Consequently, huge columns of Mexican laborers crossed the Mexican-American border and worked in the fields and factories in the United States. For the most part, Mexican Americans have been engaged in agricultural industry. But over the past twenty years, they have made strong efforts to diversify their occupations, getting jobs in le​gal and medical professions as well as in airplane plants and ship​yards. Among the second and the third generations, the tendency to assimilate into American mainstream culture is fairly high, with their traditional extended family being gradually replaced by the more typical American unclear family and their women, instead of staying home, now also go out to work. All in all, Mexican Ameri​cans have become a strong force in American political and economic especially in the southwest. Puerto Ricans The second largest group in the Hispanic population in the United States is Puerto Ricans, living mostly in New York City and other northern urban areas such as Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. The United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, and in 1917 Puerto Ricans were granted American citizenship. Ever since then, Puerto Ricans have never stopped their migration to the mainland. In 1910, the census recorded 1,500 Puerto Ricans living in the United States; by 1930, there were 53,000. Like other immigrants, those Puerto Ricans who came were es​caping from a land with too many people and too few jobs. The Great Depression and the Second World War cut the flow to the mainland, but beginning in 1945, the flow swelled to a torrent. As late as 1940, New York City had slightly more than 60,000 Puerto Ricans: in a decade, however, the figure had quadrupled. Today, there are over 2 million Puerto Ricans scattered throughout the con​tinental United States. The Puerto Rican experience in New York and other major cit​ies on the continent is probably closer to that of the European immi​grants who landed on the East Coast and settled in urban areas than to that of Mexicans in the West. Although there are Puerto Rican migrant workers who move up and down the East Coast according to the seasons, essentially, however, they are an urban people with problems of the city's poor. When they arrived in New York, Puer​to Ricans replaced the European immigrants in lower-level factories -- especially the Jews and Italians in the garment industries — and in the city's worst slums. However, as many Puerto Ricans are products of centuries of racial mixing between the island's white and black populations, they have encountered a color problem like other minorities in the U. S. Upon their arrival, most of Puerto Ricans quickly learned that the darker one's skin is, the greater the diffi​culty in gaining acceptance by the dominant white culture. Because of the color problem, together with poverty, language and other concomitant difficulties, Puerto Ricans have been having a hard time climbing the social and political ladder in the United states. Indeed, to read the social and economic statistics of Puerto Ricans in New York and elsewhere is to recall the plight of minori​ties in the past. In 1979, for example, the group's median family in​come was less than the national average, and a distressing number of Puerto Rican families were headed by women with small earnings. More than a third of all Puerto Ricans families lived below the pov​erty line. At present, the group's unemployment rate is almost double that of other segments of the population. To make matters worse, fewer Puerto Ricans graduate from high schools or college than other ethnic groups, and more of their elementary-school-age children are below grade level in reading. As a result of all these dismal developments, Puerto Ricans have a higher incidence of ju​venile delinquency and more drug addicts. Also, as in the ease of blacks, there arc more incidents of white police brutality toward them. In one word, they are plagued with the disabilities historical​ly associated with low-class, poorly educated immigrants. Cubans The third largest group, Cuban Americans, comprises about 5 per​cent of the Latino population in the United States and has made a major impact on the East Coast, changing the complexion of a southern city — Miami — in the 20th century. Cubans came in two waves. The first wave lasted from 1959 through the 1960s, and the second wave started in 1980, when over 120,000 landed in Key West, Florida, and continued to the early 1990s. As a group, Cubans are considerably different from most other immigrants in the United States. First of all, the bulk of them were once "political refugees" who left their homeland because of the policies inaugurated by Fidel Castro after he led a successful rev​olution against the regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1958. Secondly, the first wave of Cuban refugees came from the elite of their socie​ty. According to one study, about 70 percent were professionals, or white-colored workers; about 40 percent had some college educa​tion; and 80 percent of those who came had yearly income above the average in Cuba. The second wave of Cuban immigrants was different from the first wave. Take the whole exodus process for example. The stage for the dramatic exodus was largely set by social and economic prob​lems in Cuba and the U. S. blockade policy toward Cuba. When Castro decided to permit the dissatisfied to leave, all kinds of ships, large or small, set sail from Florida to pick up refugees in Cuba. Relatives and friends of the Cubans and those eager to make money out of providing transportation were also involved in the movement. Additionally, using this issue as a political propaganda, the U.S. immigration authorities worked with voluntary agencies to settle the Cubans and reunite them with their families in America. By and large, the exodus of the 1980s was a migration of young adult males in their prime working years, and most of them chose Miami as their new home. The Cuban Americans, since settling down in Miami in the late 1950s, have revitalized this once sleepy southern town and transformed it into a major international hub. Indeed^ Miami is now regarded not simply as the stronghold of Cu​ban Americans (including their subversive activities against Castro government), but also as the "capital" of Latino Americans. Cuban Americans have made enormous success there and Miami, being an ideal resort for holiday-makers, has attracted businessmen and fin​anciers from the entire Western Hemisphere. Asian Americans "Asian American" is a convenient term that lumps together a diverse collection of immigrants and American-born population groups. It includes, for example, "boat people" who came to the United States as refugees after the Vietnam War, the most recent Asian Indians who arrived as professional immigrants, and the descendants of Chi​nese who were attracted to the United States by the 1849 "Gold Rush". Obviously, the principle of continental origins is used to jus​tify putting in one category peoples with different religions, skin colors, socio-economic backgrounds, and historical experiences. Asian American population had been small for a long time, be​cause for centuries, an overwhelming majority of America's immi​grants were European. As late as 1965, there were only one million Asians living in the United States. Thanks to the 1965 immigration law, Asian Americans have soared in numbers — according to the 2000 census, there were all together 10,242,998 Asian Americans residing in the United States, making up 3. 6 percent of the total population. During the past thirty-year period, there have been nearly four times more Asian immigrants than during the entire span of more than a hundred years between the Gold Rush of '49 and the passing of the new immigration law in 1965. Indeed, among the most recent immigrants, one out of every two now comes from Asia. The large influx of Asian immigrants has not only produced a massive increase in Asian population, but also has recompositioned the Asian communities in the United States. In 1960, 52 percent were Japanese. 27 percent Chinese, 20 percent Filipino, 1 percent Korean, and 1 percent Asian Indian. Twenty-five years later, 21 percent of Asian Americans were Chinese, 21 Filipino, 15 percent Japanese, 12 percent Vietnamese, 11 percent Korean, 10 percent Asian Indian, 4 percent Laotian, 3 percent Cambodian, and 3 per​cent "other". At present, however, the largest five Asian American groups in the United States are ranked as follows; Chinese (2. 43 million), Filipino (1.85 million), Asian Indian (1.68 million), Ko​rean (1.10 million) and Japanese (0.79 million). Given the limited space available for this chapter, the following three Asian groups are singled out for discussion to shed some light on the Asian Ameri​can experience in their adopted country. They are, namely. Chi​nese, the largest Asian group; Filipinos, one of the fastest-growing ethnic group; and Japanese, one of the oldest Asian groups in the United States. Chinese Many of the Chinese went to the United States as contact laborers or on money borrowed from Chinese-American organizations that as​sumed a supervisory role toward them in the United States. Like other immigrants totally unfamiliar with the language and culture of the United States, Chinese laborers often worked in gangs under the supervision of a fellow countryman. They were hard workers in ag​riculture, railroad building, and other taxing physical labor. They also worked cheaply and lived frugally, saving what they could to start their own businesses, or take money home when they returned to China. By 1851, there were 25,000 Chinese in California. By 1870, the number rose to 63,000 in the United States, almost all on the West Coast. In 1880, about 63,000 Chinese entered the United Slates, and in the middle of the 1880s, as a result of an exclusionary law directed against the Chinese (The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), the inflow of Chinese immigrants was drastically curtailed, down to less than 1,000 a year. The reception of the Chinese immigrants was both harsh and violent. As Chinese immigrants were non-white and non-Christian, they were viewed as "strangers from a different shore", incapable of being assimilated into the mainstream culture. Additionally, they were feared as competitors, whose hard work and longer hours for low pay were thought to drive down the standard of living of Ameri​can labor. So labor unions in California were in the forefront of decades-long efforts to exclude Chinese and expel Chinese residents from the United States. With such an uproar against Chinese immi​grants, Chinese residents in the West were either forced to leave or took the hardest, dirtiest and most menial jobs. The Chinese reaction to the pervasive discrimination was with​drawal and inconspicuousness, much like the European Jews in the ghetto. Harassed by both violent mobs and legal impositions, Chi​nese immigrants usually tried to live in places where they were toler​ated and got jobs urgently needed and few whites were interested in. That, in part, explained why most Chinese in the late 19'" and early 20th centuries found themselves working as laundrymen or domestic servants. In addition to these two principal occupations, Chinese restaurants were another major source of jobs, located mostly in Chinese communities known as "Chinatown". Indeed, as late as 1920, more than half of all employed Chinese in the United States worked either in laundries or restaurants. As a result, the Chinese hand laundry became an American institution, and so did the food made in Chinese restaurants for Americans. With the passage of time, many Chinese managed to improve their lives in an impressive way. Some thrived in business in China​town, while others made headway in the larger society outside China​town. With this strengthened economic position, they sent their American-born children to college and university, paving way for Chinese Americans to enter professional occupations. As of 1940, only 3 percent of Chinese Americans in California were in the pro​fessions, while 8 percent of whites were. By 1950, the Chinese per​centage had doubled to 6 percent, and the white percentage had ris​en to 10 percent. In the next decade, however, the proportion of Chinese who were professionals tripled to 18, passing the whites at 15. During the Second World War. China and the United States be​came allies in their fight against the fascists. Under pressure from the Chinese government, the U. S. government repealed the Chi​nese Exclusion Act of 1882 in 1943, and passed new legislation, permilting limited immigration from China. Within a few years, more than 8,000 Chinese brought their wives to the United States, some of them after decades of separation. In the 1960s, many Chinese people left Hong Kong for the United States, settling mostly in the Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York, and later on, Chicago. These hordes of immigrants from Hong Kong doubled the Chinese population in the United States — from 237,000 to 435,000. From then onwards, with the passage of the new immigration law of 1965, about 20,000 Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan legally entered the United States every year, and probably an equal number also entered illegally. After the normalization of relations between China and the United States, the People's Republic of China was given its own annual quota for immigrants to the United States. Be​tween 1965 and 1984. Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong, Tai​wan, and Chinese mainland numbered 419.373, radically transfor​ming the Chinese community from 61 percent American-born to 63 percent foreign-born. Unlike the old immigration, which was composed mostly of men, the new immigration has included more women than men. Also, while the earlier immigrants had been peasants, the recent immi​grants have originated not only from the working class, but also from the professional class. For instance, the number of scientists and engineers immigrating from Hong Kong and Taiwan skyrocket​ed from 36 in 1964 to 1,164 in 1970. Beginning in the 1980s, large numbers of students and scholars from the mainland went to study in the U.S. , and upon the completion of their study, many of them decided to stay there, adding additional number of Chinese immi​grants in the United States. The different class background of the new immigrants has led to the formation of a bipolar Chinese-American community — one divided between a colonized working class and an entrepreneurial-professional middle class. In the mid-1980s, for example, about 51 percent of Chinese immigrants were employed in menial service and low-skilled, blue-collar work, while 42 percent were engaged in managerial and technical occupations. As a result, in New York City, there are now the "Downtown Chi​nese" of waiters and seamstresses as well as the affluent and profes​sional "Uptown Chinese". Likewise, in southern California, there are Chinatowns in central Los Angeles as well as in Monterey Park — America's first suburban Chinatown. On the whole, Chinese Americans today have higher income as well as higher occupational status than the average American, It is estimated that one-fourth of all employed Chinese Americans arc working in scientific and professional fields. In politics, however, Chinese Americans have not been a high-profile ethnic group. It is only in the recent ten to fifteen years that Chinese Americans have shown active participation in American politics, campaigning for lo​cal and state government positions. While there are still some pock​ets of poverty in Chinatowns, many Chinese Americans are well-educated and quite prosperous. Filipinos Technically, they were not foreigners, for they came from the Phil​ippines, a territory acquired by the U.S. from Spain at the conclu​sion of the Spanish-American War. While they had not been granted citizenship, they were classified as "American nationals", which al​lowed them entry to the United States. The influx of Filipinos was sudden and massive. In 1910, the mainland Filipino population was only 406; by 1920, there were 5.603 Filipinos. But ten years later, their numbers had multiplied almost nine times to 45,208, and they were seen everywhere from Washington and Oregon along the West Cost to Illinois and Michigan in the Midwest to New York and Maryland on the East Coast. The Filipinos on the mainland had had very different experi​ences from their compatriots in Hawaii. In the islands, Filipinos did not face the presence of a racist white working class, and were pit​ted against Japanese workers on the plantations. On the mainland, however, Filipinos competed with white laborers and soon became the targets of violent white working-class backlash. As a result of this widespread racial prejudice and discrimination, "the little brown brothers", as they were called by white Americans, soon dis​covered that instead of making easy and big money, the jobs open to them were those least desired by whites. In fact, three areas of em​ployment were all that they could possibly enter without stiff com​petition from whites; domestic service, fishery, and agriculture. And, even in these areas, when economic situation deteriorated. Filipinos found themselves the easy victims of white resentment and anger. Like the Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Filipino immigrants encountered racial discrimination of every kind. Not only in em​ployment did they face unfair treatment, but they were also discrim​inated against in everyday life. White barbers refused to cut their hair, white landlords declined to rent apartments to them, and white restaurants and coffee shops denied them the service accorded to white customers. Indeed, anti-Filipino stereotypes and images were so deep-rooted in the minds of white people that Filipinos were often seen as "criminally-minded", willing to "slash, cut or stab at the least provocation". Such racially-colored stereotypes fused with the economic rivalry soon gave rise to anti-Filipino hate and vio​lence, resulting in frequent anti-Filipino race riots in the 1930s. In early 1930, for example, four hundred white men attacked a Filipi​no hall in California. Within this context of hysteria whipped up by anti-Filipino sentiments, some white racists wrote letters to the city government, warning: "Get rid of all Filipinos, or we'll burn this town down." And those farmers who hired Filipino laborers also re​ceived threatening messages: "Hire no Filipinos, or we'll destroy your crop and you too. " In short, many whites believed that Filipi​nos did not "belong" and should not be permitted to immigrate to the United States. However, the Filipino "problem" was not to be easily solved. The 1924 immigration law's provision prohibiting the entry of aliens ineligible to citizenship could not be applied to Filipinos, because they were not "aliens", but, instead, came from an American terri​tory. The only way to exclude Filipinos was to grant independence to the Philippines. With this in mind, U, S. Congress in 1934 passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act. establishing the Philippines as a com​monwealth and providing independence in ten years. Under the new law. Filipinos were reclassified as aliens and would no longer have unrestricted entry to the United States. What the Tydings-McDuffie Act revealed was when the United States needed cheap labor, Filipino farm laborers were allowed to come, but once they had complet​ed their "brief but strenuous service to American capital", they were no longer welcomed and should be kicked out. It was not until the passage of the new immigration law of 1965 that Filipinos immigrated into the United States in large numbers again. Between 1965 and 1984, for example, 664,938 Filipinos en​tered — over 200,000 more than the Chinese counterparts during the same period. Indeed, in the 1980s, over three fourths of the Filipino population were immigrants. But, unlike the early Filipino immigrants, the newcomers came from the city rather than the country, and they migrated as settlers rather than sojourners. What was also striking about the new immigrants from the Philippines was that women far outnumbered men - 66, 517 to 47.599 between 1966 and 1971. Additionally, the new immigrants included profes​sionals such as engineers, scientists, accountants, teachers, law​yers, nurses, and doctors. Between 1966 and 1970, of 39,705 Filipi​nos admitted under the occupational category, only 3.792, or 10 percent, were laborers, while 25,723, or 65 percent, were profes​sional and technical workers. Most prominent among the profes​sional immigrants have been nurses and doctors. For instance, dur​ing the 1970s, of the 2,000 nurses who had graduated from schools in the Philippines each year, 20 percent came to the United States. Proportionately speaking, however, the flow of Filipino doctors has been even greater. The University of Santo Tomas Medical School (in the Philippines) has been supplying more doctors to the United States than any other foreign medical school. It is estimated that forty percent of all Filipino doctors in the world now practice in the United States. Still, regardless of whether they are old-timers or recent immi​grants, Filipinos, like other minority groups, have found themselves in a racially stratified labor market. In San Francisco in 1980, for example, both immigrants and American-born Filipino men were far below white men in participation in managerial and professional occupations—16 percent for Filipinos, compared to 32 percent for whites. In the service occupations such as food, health, and clean​ing, on the other hand. Filipino men had a much higher level of participation than white men — 12 percent for American-born Fili​pinos and 21 percent for immigrant Filipinos, compared to only 16 percent for whites. On the whole, then, because of their location in the lower strata of the labor-market structure, Filipino men now earn about two thirds of the average income of white men in the United States. Japanese Emigration from Japan to the United States began in the late 19th century, when 148 contract laborers sailed from Japan to Hawaii, which did not become an American possession until 1898. Japanese migration to the mainland of the United States was just over 200 in the 1860s and less than 200 in the 1870s, but rose rapidly thereafter. For instance, during the 1880s, more than 2,000 Japanese moved to the mainland, and then tripled this number during the 1890s, and finally reached a peak of more than 100,000 in the first decade of the twentieth century. The Japanese were welcomed both in Hawaii and on the mainland of the United States. They were a preselected group of healthy young men of good reputation, ambitious enough to venture thousands of miles from their homeland. The principle occupations of more than 90 percent of the first-generation Japanese Americans were in farming, business, and a va​riety of other strenuous laboring tasks on railroads, in mines, lum​ber mills, canneries, meat-packing plants, and similar arduous occu​pations. In all these occupations, Japanese accepted low pay, long hours, and difficult working conditions without complaint. All the professional and clerical workers of that generation put together added up to less than 10 percent. Like the Chinese in the United Stales, it is after the first-generation Japanese Americans had achieved some measure of success that they were able to send their children - the second generation — on to higher education and from there into the profession and other occupations requiring for​mal training. More than other Asian Americans, the Japanese were willing to undertake the risks of entrepreneurship, and their diligence and persistence to make a success of a new business accounted for their achievements in such businesses as gardening, produce markets, ho​tels, restaurants, tailor and dye shops, barbershops and grocery stores. By 1909, for example, there were between 3,000 and 3.500 Japanese-owned establishments in the western states, most of them in major cities like San Francisco. Seattle, Los Angeles, and Sacra​mento. However, as time went by, the very virtues of the Japanese eventually turned against them. While Japanese migrants made ex​cellent employees, they made themselves rivals of white workers, because Japanese immigrants' diligence, thrift, and ambitions meant that increasing number of them began to move up the social ladder from laborers to small businessmen. Likewise, while farmers developed resentment against them, as Japanese, through hard work and hard saving, moved up from the ranks of agricultural laborers to tenant farmers and even landlords. With this hostility against Japanese growing high, California in 1913 passed the Alien Land Law, forbidding Japanese to own California land. Shortly after wards, anti-Japanese sentiment developed into a political drive to stop Japanese immigrants from being admitted into the United States. In 1924, Congress enacted a general immigration law that included a provision prohibiting the entry of aliens ineligible to citi​zenship. Although they had not been named explicitly, the Japanese had been singled out for special discriminatory treatment, for the Chinese and Asian Indians had already been excluded by other legis​lation. After the restrictive immigration law of 1924, the number of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. dwindled substantially. During the Second World War, as the U. S. and Japan became enemies after the surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, fears started to grow that the West Coast would be the next target for military attack or even invasion. As Japanese immigrants had their largest concentration of population on the West Coast and Hawaii, American anger and apprehension about Japan turned against Japanese Americans living there. Accordingly, the FBI rounded up about 1,500 Japanese Americans as potential threats to American security not long after the Pearl Harbor attack. In Febru​ary 1942. President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order, authoriz​ing the army to evacuate "any and all persons from military areas as designated by the army and provide accommodation" for them somewhere else. Between March and November 1942, more than 100,000 men, women, and children were shipped off from the West Coast and Hawaii to the huge interment camps in isolated, barren regions from California to Arkansas. These locations were "places where nobody had lived before and no one has lived since". The im​pact of the mass internment on the Japanese was devastating. The financial impact alone was massive, because business built over a li​fetime of hard work had to be liquidated in a few weeks. Added to the financial losses were the many personal traumas of forced uprooting and interment. Gradually, however, the internment policy met with strong op​position from both Japanese Americans and white Americans. By the end of 1944, the U. S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the internment of those Japanese who were American citizens. And. freed from the internment. Japanese Americans once again moved into their familiar fields and sonic of them into the new fields. The following two decades witnessed remarkable economic rise on the part of Japanese Americans. For instance, by 1959, Jap​anese American males on the mainland earned 99 percent of the in​come of white males, and by 1969, the average personal income of Japanese Americans was 11 percent above the national average, and average family income was 32 percent above. Also noticeable was a striking change in occupational distribution among them. For exam​ple, in 1940. the proportion of Japanese Americans working in pro​fessional occupation was less than half that of whites; by 1960, however- the Japanese had slightly more representation than whites in professional occupations. The most recent immigration from Asia has not affected Japan as strongly as it has on other Asian countries. Indeed, the so-called second wave of Asian immigration from J965 to the present has in​cluded proportionately fewer Japanese. Only about 4,000 have been coming annually, far below (he 20,000 quota allotted to Japan. Be​tween 1965 and 1984, only 93.646 Japanese entered the United States, representing 3 percent of all Asian immigrants. The primary reason for the diminishing outflow of Japanese emigrants lies in the weakening "push" force. Japan's tremendous post-World War II economic expansion has generated a great demand for labor, and consequently the Japanese government and industries have not en​couraged the overseas migration of workers. Subsequently, without an influx of new immigrants from Japan, Japanese Americans have become predominantly a native-born population; in 1980, 72 per​cent were citizens by birth. Now, Japanese Americans are largely English-speaking, and, the Japantowns or Nihonmachis have not been culturally renewed, for they lack the large and re invigorating presence of new immigrants. Indeed, many second- and third-generation Japanese Americans have moved to the suburbs, making Japantowns increasingly irrelevant to the young Japanese Ameri​cans. Native Americans Of all the minority groups in the United States, American Indians, or Native Americans, were the first to have settled down there. About seventy-five thousand years before the birth of Christ, the ancestors of the Native Americans migrated from Eastern Asia across a land bridge to Alaska. Sixty thousand years later, the rising waters of the Pacific Ocean submerged this route under the Bering Strait. For fifteen thousand years, the new inhabitants of the West​ern Hemisphere had no contact with the rest of the world. These tribes of hunters slowly moved to warmer regions and adapted their economic and cultural lives to many climates. With this transition, Native American history changed dramat​ically from a hunting to an agricultural economy. Beginning about 2000 B. C. , Native Americans in Mexico and Peru domesticated maize, or Indian corn. Through the centuries, these tribal peoples bred corn into an extremely large and nutritious plant. By cultivat​ing corn, Native Americans achieved an agricultural surplus. Over time, as they developed more settled way of life, they worked out pretty complex irrigation systems. When nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of hunters came to these areas, they, too, quickly adapted themselves to this kind of settlement. When Europeans arrived in the American continent after Columbus' voyage, Native Americans soon found themselves the victims of their greed for gold, silver and other treasures. Horses, steel swords, and primitive muskets gave Europeans a great advan​tage over Indian inhabitants. Overwhelmed both in manpower and weaponry. Native Americans started their losing war with European invaders from the very beginning of their encounter. They fought bravely against white invaders under adverse conditions, and made gradual retreats into forests in the face of advancing conquerors. While they eventually got defeated by European invaders. Native Americans, nevertheless, left a great record of bravery and courage in the defense of their home. Conversely, while European whites triumphed over the Indians, they also left an inglorious record of brutality and cruelty in the conquest of the "New World". When British colonists followed at Spaniards' heels to come to North America, they had three goals in mind: (1) to plant the Christian religion: (2) to traffic in goods; and (3) to conquer. In varying degrees, English colonists tried whatever means available and effective to implement their goals. Missionaries viewed the In​dians as heather and went to great lengths to convert them into Christianity. Merchants considered the Indians to be easy trading partners, from whom they could profit tremendously. And ambi​tious conquistadors regarded the Indians as "wild beasts, unreasona​ble creatures and brutish savages", who had to be ruled with an iron hand. While their goals seemingly differed from one to another, and their means showed a great many variations, the overall objec​tives for the three groups of English colonists remained very much the same: to take whatever they could from the Indians, Under the guidance of these principles, English colonists, from the first day they set foot on the North American soil, engaged themselves in the ambitious plan to change the political, economic and cultural landscape of the continent. In the process of continen​tal settlement, the English purchased land from the Indians when possible, and took land away from them by force if necessary. Driv​en by their insatiable desires for gold, furs, and, above all, land, English colonists and later Americans pushed Native Americans first from the East Coast to the areas east of the Mississippi River, and then from that region to the areas west of the Mississippi, and final​ly all the way down to the West Coast. Uprooted and constantly chased about. Indians not only found their peaceful family and community life disrupted, but to their great dismay, they also found their traditional culture severely damaged as a result of white con​quest. Eventually, the overpowered Indians were driven to some re​mote interior areas, known nowadays as "Indian Reservations". Reservations usually consist of those areas least desirable to whites. As such, this arrangement was not and has not been benefi​cial to Native Americans. First, when reservation policy was first introduced, Indians had no say over their own affairs on reserva​tions, because U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1884 and 1886 de​nied them the right to become citizens. It is not until 1924 that the U.S. Congress passed a law, making all Indians citizens of the United States. Second, at the beginning of their settlement, reserva​tions were constantly harassed and attacked by whites, because white farmers and white herders continually sought even remote In​dian lands for their own purpose. Third, in setting up reservations, the federal government often ignored tribal integrity, even combi​ning on the same reservations tribes that had habitually waged war with one another. This way of arrangement was detrimental to Indi​an tribes, either for their survival or for their cultural preservation. Last but not least, the reservation policy has cut off the outside con​tact with the Indian community, leaving them in perpetual back​wardness. Of course, not all Indians live on reservations. According to the 2000 census, about 2. 5 million people in the United States may have some Indian blood. Out of this number, probably only one out of every four nowadays is a "reservation Indian". Indeed, no Indi​ans are forced to stay on reservations, and among the younger gen​eration, there has been a strong tendency to leave reservations for modern cities. In 1940, for example, there were fewer than 30,000 Indian city residents; but by the mid-1980s, Indian urban dwellers reached over 700.000. However, while charmed by the glamour of metropolitan landscape. Indians have also found it hard to live in modern American cities. Oftentimes, due to a cluster of factors such as discrimination, poor skills, and lack of political power, Indians, for years, have been among the poorest groups in American urban society. At present, about 20 percent live below the poverty line, and their unemployment is higher than that of African Americans. Those with jobs frequently earn low wages, and only a very small well-educated elite enjoys a high standard of living. In a way, those Indians, who remain on reservations have man​aged to maintain their culture to a certain extent. They keep their religious rituals in their own way; they pass down their folklore to their children; they hold their traditional dance, fairs, and festivals on regular basis: and they organize their social and family life in as much the same way as their ancestors did. In short, appalling as their living conditions arc, Indians on reservations have been doing all they can to preserve their cultural heritage so as to keep this stream of human civilization to flow continuously. New Words and Expressions WASP（White Anglo-Saxon Protestant）　　　信奉断教的盎格鲁一撒克逊白人 "Cold Rush"　　　　　　　　　　　　　　“淘金热” coolie 苦力，小工 African American (Afro-American, Black) 非洲裔美国人 cash crop （为谋现金而种植的）商品作物 cotton gin 轧棉机，轧花机 meliorate　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　改善，改进，减轻 Black Code “黑人法典” 奴隶制取消前美国南部某些州的奴隶法》 zero tolerance 零容忍（即绝不容忍）： iron-fisted 严酷无情的，残忍的 unquenchable 难抑制的，不能消灭的 redeem 赎回，挽回，补偿 fornication 通奸，私通 debauch 放荡，堕落 crop-sharing system 作物分成制 disfranchise 剥夺公民权，剥夺公民选举权 Jim Crow Caw 种族歧视和种族隔离法律 Ku Klux Kim “三K党” Backlash 后冲，强烈反应 "The Promised Land" “希望之地”，“希望之乡” exodus 大批离去 with a high price tag 以高昂的代价 be immune from 免受，不受…影响 resort to 求助，诉诸 settle for 满足于 make headway　　　　　　　　　　　　　　取得进展 gain ground　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　有进展，越来越为人们接受 drive home　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　使人充分理解，讲得透彻明白 contiguous　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　邻近的，毗邻的 racial quota　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　不同种族人员的（限定）配顿 busing　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　用公共汽车（或校车）接送黑白小 　　　　　　学生去外区上学 Inaugurated by　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　由…开始 throw/shed light on　　　　　　　　　　　　　使某事显得非常清楚 taxing　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　繁重的，费力的 bipolar 两极的，双极的 nigh profile (人注目的)高姿态，态度明确 pit…against 使对立，使竟争，使相斗 provocation 激怒，刺激，挑衅 whip up 鞭打 Internment camp 拘留青 Liquidate 清算，清偿 Bering Strait 令海峡 nomadic tribe 游牧部落 semi-nomadic tribe 半游牧部落 follow at one' heels 紧跟在某人后面 Indian Reservation 印第安人居留地 Cultural Notes The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) NAACP was formed in May 1910, headed by eight prominent Americans, seven white and one. William E. B. Du Bois, black. The selection of Du Bois was significant, for he was a black who had rejected the policy of gradualism advocated by Booker T. Washington, and demanded immediate equality for blacks. Now, NAACP is mainly composed of African Americans, whose goal is the end of racial discrimination against blacks. Separate-but-Equal Doctrine This doctrine was designed to give legal sanction to racial discrimi​nation against blacks in the U. S. In a series of cases during the 1870s, the L). S. Supreme Court opened the door to discrimination by ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment protected citizens' rights against infringement by state governments. The federal govern​ment, according to the Court, had no authority over the actions of individuals or organizations. If blacks wanted production under the law. the Court said, they must seek it from the states. The climax to the rulings came in 1883, when in the Civil Rights Cases the Court struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which had prohibited segregation in public facilities such as streetcars, hotels, theaters and parks. Subsequent lower-courts in the 1880s established the principle that blacks could be restricted to "separate-but-equal facili​ties". The Supreme Court upheld the separate-but-equal doctrine in Plessy V. Ferguson (1896), and officially applied it to schools in Cummins V. County Board of Education (1899). Montgomery Bus Boycott On Thursday, December 1, 1955, when Mrs. Rosa Parks, a middle-aged department store seamstress and active member of the NAACP, refused to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in Montgomery. Alabama, she got arrested. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., black people in Montgomery decided to organize a bus boycott for one day, asking every black person in Montgomery to slay off the buses for one full day. As about 70% of the bus company's customers were black, the buses almost drove empty all day long. Later that day, black leaders decided to contin​ue the boycott until the company promised black riders better treat​ment. With unflinching determination, the black people in Mont​gomery eventually forced the company to back down from its dis​criminatory position. March on Washington This was an important historic moment in the Civil Rights Move​ment of the 1960s. In August 1963, more than 250,000 people, black and white, gathered at Lincoln Memorial for racial equality. At this huge rally, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his fa​mous "1 Have a Dream" speech. Historically, this event is known as March on Washington. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 This act was signed into law by President Johnson in 1964 shortly af​ter the assassination of John Kennedy. The act outlawed discrimina​tion on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, not only in public accommodations but also in employment. An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established the same year to investigate and judge complaints of job discrimination. The act also authorized the government to withhold funds from pub​lic agencies that discriminated on the basis of race, and it empow​ered the attorney genera) to guarantee voting rights and end school segregation. The Voting Right Act of 1965 This was one of the three legislative milestones in 1965. It empow​ered the attorney general to supervise voter registration in areas where fewer than half the minority residents of voting age were reg​istered. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King jr. (1929 - 1968), American clergyman and civil rights leader, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Son of the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King was ordained in 1947 and became (1954) minister of a Baptist church in Montgomery. Alabama. He led the boycott by Montgomery blacks against the segregated bus lines, and he attained national promi​nence by advocating a policy of non-violent resistance to segrega​tion. In 1963, he organized the massive March on Washington. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968. he was shot and killed by an assassin's bullet on the balcony of the mo​tel where he was staying. James Ray was later convicted of his mur​der. Malcolm X Malcolm X (1925 - 1965), national black leader in the United States, was also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He was intro​duced to the Black Muslims while serving a prison term and became a Muslim minister upon his release in 1952. He quickly became very prominent in the movement with a following perhaps equaling that of its leader Elijah Muhammad. In 1963, Malcolm was suspended by Elijah after a speech in which Malcolm suggested President Kennedy's assassination was a matter of the "chickens coming home to roost". He then formed a rival organization of his own, the Mus​lim Mosque, Inc. In 1964, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, he an​nounced his conversion to orthodox Islam and his new belief that there could be brotherhood between black and white. In 1965, he was shot and killed in a public auditorium in New York City. Louis Farrakhan Louis Farrakhan (1933 - ). American minister, is now the leader of the Nation of Islam, an organization founded by Fard Mu​hammad in 1930 and led to prominence from 1934 to 1975 by Elijah Muhammad. Raised by his mother, Louis learned early the value of work, responsibility and intellectual development. Graduating from high school at age 16. Louis earned an athletic scholarship for his prowess as a track sprinter and attended Winston-Salem Teachers' College, in North Carolina, excelling in the study of English. Popularly known as "The Charmer", Louis worked day and night in the Harlem community and around New York in the 1960s and 70s, restoring respect for the Nation of Islam. His tremendous success is evidenced by mosques ad study groups in over 80 cities in America and Great Britain. Literally, millions of listeners have attended his lectures. As part of the major thrust for true empowerment for the black community, Louis Farrakhan re-registered to vote in June 1996 and has formed a coalition of religious, civic and political or​ganizations to represent the voice of the disfranchised on the Ameri​can political landscape. Nathan Glazer Nathan Glazer (1924 - ), Professor of Education and Social Structure, Emeritus, was born in New York City and received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. He worked on the magazine Commentary from 1944 to 1953, and as a book editor at Doubleday and Random House after that. He wrote and co-au​thored many books such as American Judaism. The Social Basis of American Communism, and Beyond the Melling Pot. In 1963- he started teaching at the University of California-Berkeley, and in 1969 joined Harvard faculty as a professor of education in the Grad​uate School of Education. Although recently retired, he is still quite active in academic life. Imperial Valley It refers to the fertile region in the Colorado Desert, Southeast Cali​fornia, extending South into Northwest Mexico. Once part of the Gulf of California, most of the region is below sea level. Receiving only 7.6 cm of rain annually, the valley experiences extremely high temperature range. The valley is an important source of winter fruits and vegetables for the northern areas of the United States. Cotton, dates, grains, and dairy products arc also important. San Joaquin Valley The valley is near San Joaquin, a river rising in the Sierra Nevada, cast California, and flowing west through the central valley to form a large delta. The wide southern part of the basin between the Sier​ra Nevada and the Coast Range is usually called the San Joaquin Valley. Mexican Revolution In November, 1910, an idealistic liberal leader. Francisco I. Madero. began an armed revolt against Diaz, who had gone back on his word not to seek reelection in 1910. Madero was quickly successful, and in 1911, Diaz resigned and went to exile. Madero was elected President in November, 1911. Well-meaning but ineffectual, he was attacked by conservatives and revolutionaries alike, and was overthrown in February, 1913 by his general, Victoriano Huerta, and was later murdered. President Huerta's regime was dictatorial and repressive, and revolts soon broke out everywhere. In 1914, Huerta was forced to resign. Then, there followed a civil war in Mexico. By the end of 1915, Mexico came under the control of Venustiano Carranza. Carranza sponsored the constitution of 1917, which, among other things, provided for the nationalization of mineral re​sources, for the restoration of communal lands to the Indians, for the separation of church and state, and for educational, agrarian, and labor reforms. Although most of the provisions were not imme​diately implemented. Carranza's reform efforts were continued by his successors. Spanish-American War It was a brief military conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898. While basically arising out of Spanish policies in Cuba, the war was, to a large degree, brought about by the efforts of U. S. expansionists. Demands by Cuban patriots for independence from Spanish rule made U. S. intervention in Cuba a paramount issue in the relations between the United States and Spain from the 1870s to 1898. Sympathy for Cuban insurgents ran high in America. How​ever, there were many other factors for the U.S. government to en​gage in military conflict with Spain in Cuba, such as heavy losses of American investment in Cuba, the strategic importance of Cuba to Central America, a projected isthmian canal there, and a growing sense of U.S. power in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. At any rate, the war got started on April 24, 1898, and was brought to the conclusion in December of the same year. Cube was freed from Spain, but under U. S. tutelage, with Spain assuming the Cuban debt. Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded to the United States as in​demnity, and the Philippines was surrendered to the U. S. for a pay​ment of $ 20 million. The United States emerged from the war with new international power. Mexican-American War The armed conflict took place between the United States and Mexico in 1846 - 1848. While the immediate cause of the war was the U. S. annexation of Texas in December, 1845, other factors had disturbed peaceful relations between the two republics. In the U. S., there was agitation for the settlement of long-standing claims arising from injuries and property losses sustained by the U, S. citi​zens in the Various Mexican revolutions. Another major factor was The American ambition, publicly stated by President Polk, of acqui​ring California. When Mexico refused to negotiate with the U. S. over California and New Mexico, the United States was prepared to take by force what it could not achieve by diplomacy. As it turned out, the U. S won an easy victory. By the terms of the treaty. Mexico ceded to the United States two fifths of its territory and re​ceived an indemnity of $ 15 million and the assumption of American claims against Mexico by the U.S. government. Fidel Castro Fidel Castro (1926 - ) is a Cuban revolutionary and political leader. As a young lawyer, Castro openly criticized the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar in 1952. Shortly afterwards, he led an effective guerrilla campaign against Batista and toppled his gov​ernment in January, 1959. A new government under his leadership was then established. Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista y Zadivar (1901 - 1971) was president of Cuba be​tween 1940 and 1944. An army sergeant, Batista took part in the overthrow of Gerardo Machado in 1933 and subsequently headed the military and student junta that ousted Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. Made chief of staff of the army, he increased its size and power and soon became de facto ruler. In 1940, with support from the extreme left, he was elected president. However, in 1952, when Batista was a presidential candidate, he seized power through a coup just prior to the election. Discontent with his regime led to several uprisings, notably that of Fidel Castro. He fled Cuba in January, 1959 and died in Spain. Essay Questions 1. Between the early 1600s and early 1860s, the vast majority of American blacks lived in the United States as slaves. Why did it take such a long time to have them emancipated from human bondage? 2. Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, American blacks have experienced many great changes in their social, economic, and politi​cal life. However, in many ways, they still remain at the bottom of American society. What do you think are the chief reasons for their perpetual poverty and never-ending wretchedness? 3. Who are the people called Hispanics or Latinos in the United States? What kinds of things do they have in common that help to group them together as Hispanics or Latinos? What are the political, social, and cultural implications of the fast-growing population of Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. ? 4. Examine the experience of Chinese immigrants in the United States, noting, in particular, the maltreatment, indeed discrimi​nation, Chinese immigrants encountered there. Additionally, explain how recent Chinese immigrants differ from old Chinese immigrants. 5. American Indians or Native Americans were the earliest inhabit​ants of North America, and yet they are now literally a marginal group in the United States. In what ways can American Indians maintain their tradition in the land that they once "owned" but was taken over later by whites?