Making Americans : Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy / Desmond King.
King, Desmond, author.
2002
Available Online

Linked e-resources

Linked Resource Online Access

Details

Title Making Americans : Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy / Desmond King.
Author King, Desmond, author.
ISBN 9780674039629
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674039629
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2002]
Copyright ©2002
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (400 p.)
Item Number 10.4159/9780674039629 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification 323.6/0973
Summary In the nineteenth century, virtually anyone could get into the United States. But by the 1920s, U.S. immigration policy had become a finely filtered regime of selection. Desmond King looks at this dramatic shift, and the debates behind it, for what they reveal about the construction of an "American" identity. Specifically, the debates in the three decades leading up to 1929 were conceived in terms of desirable versus undesirable immigrants. This not only cemented judgments about specific European groups but reinforced prevailing biases against groups already present in the United States, particularly African Americans, whose inferior status and second-class citizenship--enshrined in Jim Crow laws and embedded in pseudo-scientific arguments about racial classifications--appear to have been consolidated in these decades. Although the values of different groups have always been recognized in the United States, King gives the most thorough account yet of how eugenic arguments were used to establish barriers and to favor an Anglo-Saxon conception of American identity, rejecting claims of other traditions. Thus the immigration controversy emerges here as a significant precursor to recent multicultural debates.Making Americans shows how the choices made about immigration policy in the 1920s played a fundamental role in shaping democracy and ideas about group rights in America.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 01. Dez 2022)
In Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments
Contents
Tables
Introduction
I. Immigrant America
2. Immigration and American Political Development
3. A Less Intelligent Class? The Dillingham Commission and the New Immigrants
II. Defining Americans
4. "The Fire of Patriotism": Americanization and U.S. Identity
5. "Frequent Skimmings of the Dross": Building an American Race?
6. "A Very Serious National Menace": Eugenics and Immigration
III. Legislating Americans
7. Enacting National Origins: The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act (1924)
8. "A Slur on Our Citizenry": Dismantling National Origins: The 1965 Act
IV. Legacies
9. After Americanization: Ethnic Politics and Multiculturalism
10. The Diverse Democracy
Appendix
Notes
Index

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export