SOC 308 Racial & Ethnic Groups week 2 assignment

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Part 2

European Ethnicity in America

Chapter 3: Early Immigration, Assimilation, and Anglo Dominance

3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants 3.2 Responses to Immigration and European Assimilation 3.3 English-Speaking Protestants 3.4 Other British Groups 3.5 Anglo Identity and Style Today Summing Up and Looking Ahead

Chapter 4: Outside the Anglo Establishment: Non-Anglo European Ethnic Groups in America

4.1 Overview of European Group Immigration 4.2 German Americans 4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans 4.5 Scandinavian Americans 4.6 Other European Groups Summing Up and Looking Ahead

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Early Immigration, Assimilation, and Anglo Dominance

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

• Describe the factors that encourage or discourage immigration.

• Explain the sources and implications of Anglo dominance in the United States.

• Analyze how classic ethnic theory applies to European immigrants but not to other immigrants.

• Compare and contrast past and current Anglo identity and the ways that it affects the immigrant experience.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants

Introduction

The United States is often described as a “nation of immigrants.” Since 1830, about 66 million people have legally immigrated to the United States from countries all over the world (Homeland Security, 2011). However, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy used the phrase as the title of his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, he meant to refer to people who had arrived in the United States from Europe and the British Isles. He probably did not foresee how the identities of U.S. immigrants would change over the rest of the 20th century. Immigration is central to the history of the United States, and some people have called immigration the “beating heart of America” (Jacobson, 1998, p. 1). The

reason is that every nation’s population, not just the United States’, is defined by its inclusion and exclusion of peoples.

To fully understand race and ethnicity in the United States today, we must start at the beginning and examine the history of early immigration in the American colo-

nies and the United States—paying particular attention to the settlement and assimilation of British and other European groups. Americans’ ethnic heritage is often invisible today, unless we specifically ask about a person’s heritage. Shared dress, language, and cultural interests all obscure the paths American families took to arrive in the “New World.” These next two chapters will examine ethnic groups who are often considered “ordinary” white Americans; these chapters will explore these Americans’ unique histories from colonial times until the mid-20th century. This exploration has three goals:

• To continue to explore the complexity of U.S. race and ethnicity • To set up the foundation for perspectives and ideas about race in the United States • To show how the establishment of a dominant culture or group inhibits the assimila-

tion of subordinate groups. (This inhibiting effect will become particularly important when we discuss race in Part 3.)

The focus for most of this chapter will be on British Americans and the creation of a Brit- ish-dominant, or Anglo-dominant, culture. This predominance affected the assimilation of later immigrant groups, including other European groups. Before we explore these topics more fully, it is important to understand the idea of immigration itself and the his- tory of immigration in the United States.

3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants

Today, people use terms like ethnicity and ethnic groups to describe and identify groups of immigrants, but originally, Americans called these new arrivals strangers and foreigners. The concept of immigrants emerged only as large numbers of Euro- peans left their continent for the Americas. For Anglo immigrants already established in America, there was an assumption of shared identity against which new immigrants seemed foreign. In the late 1780s, U.S. politicians like Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison saw the nation as comprising a “united people.” These politicians defined

Think About It

How has the meaning of “nation of immigrants” changed since Kennedy said it?

CHAPTER 3Section 3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants

Americans as “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion . . . very similar in their manners and customs” (Higham, 2002, p. 3).

In the early 19th century, however, a “flood” of people came to the U.S. shores; we now call them “immigrants.” They upset previous beliefs of a homogeneous U.S. population and alarmed many longer-established U.S. residents. Although many of these entrenched inhabitants were themselves the descendants of immigrants, they saw these newcomers as “foreigners,” with all the sense of estrangement that word implies. In his 1908 essay “The Stranger,” the German sociologist Georg Simmel described the status of these early 19th-century immigrants:

The stranger is thus . . . the wanderer who comes today and stays tomor- row. He is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going. He is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundar- ies are similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this group is deter- mined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the begin- ning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the group itself. (Simmel, 1908, p. 402)

Simmel’s words capture two important aspects of immigrant groups in the United States: immigrants are strangers or foreigners who come to America and stay, and immigrants change the American society they join.

Why Do People Immigrate?

People and families who pull up stakes and go to live in another country become objects of interest to the host society, or the people who already live in the new country. For example, both the 1820 and 1830 Censuses sought to identify the number of “foreign- ers not naturalized” (U.S. Census, 2011c). To understand the reasons for immigration, however, we have to distinguish it from other terms for human movement. The term immigrants refers to groups of people who move to a country while emigrants move from a country. These terms are sometimes confusing since any given emigrant is also an immi- grant. For example, Mayflower captain John Smith immigrated to the United States as he emigrated from England. The specific stories of individuals like John Smith, along with the larger trends of a people’s emigrating from a country, are both patterns of migration. Migration refers to large-scale movement of human populations. Many U.S. immigrants came to the United States to settle and create new lives as part of larger migration pat- terns. Some American immigrants have come to America to work for a while with the intention of returning home to their families. These people have sometimes been called sojourners and historically tended to be single males.

There is no simple answer to the question, “How and why have immigrants come to America?” Instead the reasons are “complex and multifaceted,” and “it has always been too simple to see immigration to this country as a quest for liberty and freedom” (Foner, 2000, p. 9). The reasons are also usually far more complex than a people’s moving from places of famine or other unfulfilled basic needs to America as a place of plenty.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants

U.S. immigrants have arrived in waves and scholars describe them as being either “pushed” or “pulled” to the United States. Push factors are often the main motivation behind immigration. There are undesirable condi- tions in the immigrants’ places of origin, such as political per- secution, religious intolerance, scarcity of farmland or food, or danger from wars. Pull fac- tors are attractive aspects of the places immigrants travel to. Examples include opportu- nities for work or wealth, from ordinary jobs to more lucra- tive opportunities such as the California Gold Rush; political and religious freedoms; avail- able land; greater safety; or the chance to reunite with relatives

or members of the same national group who already live in the destination country. This last settling process is called chain immigration, and these immigrants often settle in clus- ters with fellow immigrants from the same country.

U.S. Immigration Waves

The United States unquestionably became the “first universal nation,” meaning that it populated itself with people from outside its borders (Jasper, 2000, p. 43). The great 19th- century American novelist Herman Melville wrote, “Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of American blood, with- out spilling the blood of the whole world” (1849/1983, p. 185). Historians identify major periods or waves of U.S. immigration by unusually large numbers of immigrants’ arriv- ing in a relatively short time span, with many often coming from one specific region.

The first U.S. immigration wave extended from the colonial period to the early 19th cen- tury (1620–1820), when most immigrants came from Great Britain, France, the Nether- lands, and the Palatinate (a part of what would become modern-day Germany). These groups settled as farmers in the American Northeast, South, and Midwest; they were the original European settlers who would later regard subsequent immigrants—and some- times one another—as foreigners. It is difficult to ascertain exact immigration numbers from these two centuries because there was no systematic way to count new arrivals, and few ship captains recorded how many people debarked from their ships after an Atlantic crossing. Many new arrivals immigrated to America to find work; at times, labor was in such demand in the American colonies that some colonists accepted convicts as workers (Foner & American Historical Association, 1990).

© Everett Collection/SuperStock

In this drawing, a young Englishwoman is tempted to immigrate to the United States by the lure of higher wages. John Bull, a symbolic representative of England, restrains her from leaving England.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants

The second major immigration wave, called the “old immigrants,” arrived in the United States from 1820 to 1880. Fifteen million people arrived from northwestern Europe, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Bohemia (the modern-day Czech Republic), and Northern Ireland. Most of these people came to live in farming communities through- out the rural Northeast and Midwest. Some Chinese men also came to the West during these decades; they arrived in relatively small numbers, although the number was large enough that their arrival alarmed many local white Americans. Like the first immigrants, these immigrant groups also sought opportunities for economic mobility that the United States promised.

The “new immigrants” were a third wave of roughly 25 million people who came to the United States from Eastern and Southern Europe from 1880 to 1920. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Franz Boas (1858–1942) referred to them as “types distinct from our own” (quoted in Glick, 1982, p. 1). Many of these immigrants sought to escape political prob- lems at home and take advantage of economic opportunities in America. They made great contributions to industries such as construction and garment manufacturing (Foner & American Historical Association, 1990). Large new steamships brought them from such countries as Italy, Russia, Greece, Hungary, and Poland. These immigrants from South- ern and Eastern Europe were mostly young adults, and they settled in cities to form the industrial labor pool of America from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.

The next major period in the timeline of U.S. immigration was an era of regulation and quotas. Before 1882, the U.S. government made no concerted effort to limit the numbers

Figure 3.1: U.S. immigration, 1820–2011

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CHAPTER 3Section 3.1 Strangers, Foreigners, and Immigrants

of immigrants arriving at its shores. The first major regulation effort was the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Over 300,000 Chinese had come to the United States’ West Coast between the 1850s and early 1880s, working as laborers on railroads and in manufac- turing operations. When other residents became worried about how the Chinese influx would affect available jobs, the government banned further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act. This step began an era in which the government played an increasingly active role in curbing immigration from different countries. The establish- ment of immigration checkpoints like Ellis Island also attempted to allow only the healthy and self-sufficient into the United States.

The fourth defining wave of immigration began after 1924. Anti-immigration sentiment prompted Congress to approve quotas, or number limits, on immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. Congress specified that immigrants had to either be skilled manual or professional workers or be related to U.S. citizens. The Immigration Act of 1924 estab- lished the first quota system, limiting new arrivals to 2 percent of the existing immigration population. This measure meant that according to the 1890 census, for every 100 immi- grants from Russia in the United States, only two new immigrants could come from Rus- sia each year. Though the quota system has changed over time, it still “remains the basis of modern immigration policy” (Foner & American Historical Association, 1990, p. 264).

A fifth wave of immigration began after the passage of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigra- tion and Nationality Act. The Hart-Celler Act ended limits on immigration from cer- tain countries, instead allowing for up to 170,000 visas a year. The act gave preference to immigrants who could perform skilled labor or who were relatives of U.S. citizens or residents. More importantly, the act outlawed restrictions due to “race, sex, place of birth or place of residence” (Diner, 2008; quotation from U.S. Congress, 89th, 1985, Sec. 2). This wave of immigration has consisted mostly of people from Korea, China,

India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South America, Central Amer- ica, and Africa. (Most of these immigrant groups belong to the nonwhite racial groups that will be considered in Part 3.)

Recent data suggests that the United States may be experienc- ing another great wave of immi- grants, comparable to the third wave. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of U.S. residents who were born outside the coun- try increased 57 percent, from 19.8 million to 31.1 million. Dur- ing the same time, the native- born population increased by only 9.3 percent (U.S. Census, 2003, p. 2). (Part 4 will cover new trends in immigration.)

© Science Faction/SuperStock

A wood engraving of African slaves, chained in the hold of a slave ship with enough space only to sit up. Some people discuss immigration without taking into account that African slaves were brought to the United States against their will.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.2 Responses to Immigration and European Assimilation

It is important to observe that the historical data on U.S. immigration does not include slaves (Hammerschmidt, 2009). It is misleading to call slaves immigrants because immi- gration entails voluntary entry, and African slaves came to the United States against their will.

3.2 Responses to Immigration and European Assimilation

Every major wave of immigration has given rise to culture shocks for both immigrants and longer-established residents, who have sometimes responded to immigration with anger and resentment. Examples include Irish Catholic immigration before the Civil War, which prompted some Protestant Americans to form an anti- immigration, anti-Catholic political party called the Know Nothings. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese immigration; the law was a reaction to many white Americans’ concern over the numbers of Chinese male immigrants in the West. In the first decade of the 21st century, undocumented immigrants have arrived from Mexico, and many Americans have responded by debating English-only education policy and U.S. border policy. (We will explore this point and other current trends in race and ethnicity in Part 4.)

Immigration Models

Some historians have argued that early reactions to American immigration have shaped Americans’ reactions to later waves of immigration—in other words, that the ways early American colonies treated immigrants have been repeated throughout U.S. history. Histo- rian and international migration expert Susan F. Martin points to three distinct attitudes toward immigration that originated in three early American colonies: Many Virginia residents wanted cheap labor and thus imported slaves; many Massachusetts residents wanted newcomers, but only when they held specific religious beliefs; and many Pennsyl- vanians sought a political body of free citizens and therefore practiced religious tolerance toward newcomers. Martin notes that these three models favor an increase in population through the addition of newcomers, yet these models do not all benefit the newcomers— as in the case of slavery in Virginia (Martin, 2011).

Martin suggests that these models persist today. For example, welcoming undocumented Mexicans to labor in fields or factories without a path to citizenship resembles the Vir- ginia model. The Massachusetts model can be seen in some Americans’ deep suspicion toward “Islamic religious fundamentalism” since the 9/11 attacks. The Pennsylvania model of tolerance has prevailed in nationwide immigration policy since the Hart-Celler Act, which allows for full citizenship rights regardless of race or national origin. Martin suggests that understanding these three historical models can help Americans create bet- ter immigration policies today (Martin, 2011).

Patterns of European Assimilation

Nonwhites and non–English speakers have always had more difficulty fully assimilating into U.S. culture than white immigrants who speak English. Nor can we assume that such groups will eventually assimilate or be allowed to assimilate, if African Americans and

CHAPTER 3Section 3.2 Responses to Immigration and European Assimilation

Native Americans are any indi- cation. African Americans have been in the United States since at least 1619, and Native Ameri- cans have been in the United States for thousands of years before English and European settlement, but neither group has achieved full assimilation as the concept is described in Chapter 1. However, it should not be assumed that people who are considered white today have automatically had an easy time assimilating into U.S. cul- ture. Members of some Euro- pean groups were not consid- ered racially white when they arrived in the United States, and these immigrants had to strug- gle against bias. Many of these

immigrants struggled with poverty and low status before they attained middle-class sta- tus and before most mainstream Americans accepted them as racially white. Many immi- grants lived in crowded, filthy slums, and their low-paying and dangerous jobs did not provide health care insurance or old-age pensions. Many of these immigrants’ children worked in factories and mines or on farms, and the few who graduated from high school had slim chances of attending college. These immigrant groups faced serious obstacles because the United States was dominated by Protestants of British descent.

Through the early 20th century, waves of European immigrants worked to overcome those obstacles. They were expected to work themselves out of poverty, change their lan- guages to English, and substitute American values and cultural practices for the lifestyles they had left behind. However, the vast majority of these U.S. immigrants were willing to work hard to assimilate into mainstream U.S. culture.

Sociologist Milton Gordon (1918–1964) studied the success of European ethnic groups over generations. In his 1964 book Assimilation in American Life, he argued that assimila- tion occurs progressively, in seven stages. This theory is now known as classic ethnic theory. This seven-stage theory accounts for both the problems European ethnic groups experienced and their eventual success. Classic ethnic theory is now considered inade- quate for studying all immigrant groups in the United States because it does not take into account racism and other forms of bias; the concepts of pluralism and multiculturalism from Chapter 1 are alternative theories. However, classic ethnic theory still works well to explain the assimilation processes of European ethnic groups (Gordon, 1964).

In classic ethnic theory, the first stage of assimilation is cultural assimilation: learning the dominant language and basic rules and customs of a new society. Opportunities for European immigrants’ cultural assimilation in the United States included free public education, public libraries, and adult education courses. In the late 19th and early 20th

© Fuse/Thinkstock

Millions of early 20th-century European immigrants lived in tenement apartment buildings like these, which were often located in crowded slums.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.3 English-Speaking Protestants

centuries, urban institutions called settlement houses afforded another assimilation oppor- tunity. Settlement houses served poor immigrants in their own neighborhoods by pro- viding amenities, instruction in hygiene and domestic skills, adult education, and other practical information (Gordon, 1964).

The second stage of assimilation in classic ethnic theory is structural assimilation, or immigrants’ integration into public institutions and important private organizations. Structural assimilation has two parts: Immigrants are first integrated at the secondary level into societal institutions such as the workplace, government, and the educational system. Immigrants are then able to achieve integration at the primary level—entering important social organizations and friendship networks that are already filled with members of dominant ethnic groups (Gordon, 1964).

Gordon’s remaining stages of assimilation tracked deeper involvement with the domi- nant society (see Table 3.1). Immigrant group members increasingly intermarried with members of the dominant groups. They discarded their ethnic identities and took on a new American identity; this stage is called identification assimilation. Immigrants no longer encountered prejudice (a stage called attitude reception assimilation) or discrimination (a stage called behavior reception assimilation). Finally, immigrants experienced no conflict of values or competitions for power with members of the dominant groups (a stage called civic assimilation) (Gordon, 1964).

3.3 English-Speaking Protestants

The European groups who struggled to assimilate into American culture had to con-tend with a dominant American group consisting primarily of English-speaking Protestants. The English were not the first to arrive in the areas that would become the United States, but the founding thirteen colonies were British colonies by the time they declared their independence, and it was during the colonial period that the English had the most enduring impact on American culture. In 1790, the U.S. English population

Table 3.1: Gordon’s seven stages of assimilation

STAGE DESCRIPTION

Cultural assimilation Adoption of dominant language and societal customs

Structural assimilation Integration into public and private organizations

Marital assimilation Intermarriage with dominant group

Identification assimilation Ability to identify with host society

Attitude reception assimilation No prejudice

Behavior reception assimilation No discrimination

Civic assimilation No conflict of values or competition for power

CHAPTER 3Section 3.3 English-Speaking Protestants

comprised nearly half of the total population and represented the largest single national group. The English also held the most economic and political power in the United States, with many born into wealth and gaining more after the founding of the United States. They bought land, controlled commerce, and held public office as they expanded to dif- ferent local areas. As such, the English were able to determine much of the language, legal system, and cultural traditions of the entire nation (Cohen, 1991). The other European groups that arrived during and after the colonial period often faced the challenges of assimilation into Anglo-American culture—particularly if they did not speak English or practiced Catholicism instead of Protestantism.

Early Immigration, Settlement, and Cultural Dominance

The first successful settlement by English colonists occurred in 1607 in Jamestown, located in what is now the state of Virginia. These colonists were entrepreneurs in search of gold and a way to navigate their ships to Asia. The next English to arrive in the United States were the Pilgrims, who observed Massachusetts’ first Thanksgiving in 1621. These settlers had arrived at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, on the Mayflower in 1620. Between 1628 and 1642, about 80,000 English people settled in Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Con- necticut, and Rhode Island (Klein, 2008a). Again, the English were not the first to arrive in North America; others had come before them. Native Americans had been in Amer- ica for about 25,000 years; the Spanish had settled in Florida in the early 16th century;

and the Dutch had arrived in 1609 to settle New Amsterdam, which is now New York City. Later English settlers were soon joined by German and Irish immigrants along the Eastern seaboard. African slaves were also a part of American colonial life (Hashaw, 2007).

One might have thought that no one national or ethnic group would dominate America be - cause of the colonists’ multi- ethnic and multiracial origins and commitment to individual freedom. However, after ini- tial peace and cooperation, the white colonists either slaugh- tered or drove away most Native Americans; black chattel slavery also became an accepted institution in the colonies. Rep- resentatives of British groups came to make up the Ameri- can establishment during the colonial period. They included Scots, Welsh, and Scots-Irish

© Dorling Kindersley RF/Thinkstock

This illustration shows Europeans and Indians peacefully cooperating. It has been easy to idealize some aspects of the ethnic mix in colonial America.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.3 English-Speaking Protestants

Protestants; later, this chapter will consider these groups at more length. Non-British groups tended to play secondary roles in colonial leadership and had less status. Through- out U.S. history, non-British group members’ assimilation into U.S. culture has meant their adapting to institutions established by Anglo Americans. An example of this policy was the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1790 that restricted naturalization, or the process of becoming a citizen, to “free white persons” of “good moral character.” Inden- tured servants, slaves, and free blacks were excluded. People whose fathers had never resided in the United States were not eligible for citizenship. The test for “good moral character” was often simply residence in the United States for two years. In 1795, this act was amended so that an individual had to have lived in the United States for five years to be eligible for citizenship (United States, 1795).

Historian David Hackett Fischer’s 1989 book Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America makes the case that the English shaped American culture over the 150 years following the Mayflower landing. Normative folkways, or preferred social habits, settled along primar- ily British lines throughout the continental United States. American sociologist William Graham Sumner coined the term folkways in 1900 to describe “usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals” (Sumner, 1900). Sumner believed that folkways were biologically formed. Fischer, however, defines them instead as the “normative structure of values, customs, and meanings that exist in any culture” (Fischer, 1989, p. 7). Folkways include ways of speaking, dressing, building, eating, and playing. They also include how people obtain power and use it, sexual attitudes and behavior, ideas about death, and people’s way of praying and expressing religious beliefs (Fischer, 1989).

It is important to understand that Puritanism was a transatlantic movement whose adher- ents lived in the British Isles and in the English colonies. In broad terms, Puritanism was “an agenda calling for furthering the perfection of Protestant reform” (Bremer & Webster, 2006, p. xiii). This agenda included a common language and such cultural ideals as mod- esty, restraint in entertainment, and so-called “blue laws” that were designed to enforce religious standards and observance of the Sabbath. (For example, Puritans banned hunt- ing, dancing, and the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Colonial-era blue laws are still in place in some states.) English influence also extended to the household: The English preference for a nuclear family structure—containing only the parents and their children, rather than an extended family structure—became widespread in the United States. Today many Americans praise the Puritans for their contributions to American democ- racy and economic capitalism while con- demning the Puritans for their intoler- ance toward anyone who did not follow their strict edicts of behavior.

Religion was an important unifying experience in colonial America. Protestant Christi- anity was England’s official religion, and it was only natural that the English colonists would import their religious beliefs and that their practice would become widespread. After they declared independence from England, the colonists established the Episcopal Church, which was theologically identical to England’s Anglican Church, except that members did not have to swear allegiance to the British crown (Hanft, 1995). Religion was extremely important to most early colonists, and shared religious belief was often more significant than shared language. For example, German and Scandinavian Protestant

Think About It

Have you encountered blue laws? Do you see them as worthwhile or as an outdated custom?

CHAPTER 3Section 3.3 English-Speaking Protestants

immigrants found assimilation into Anglo-American culture easier than Irish Catholics found it. One enduring result of the early English influence on America was the establishment of white Anglo-Saxon Protes- tants, or WASPs, as an ideal type of American citizen. Even as recently as 1960, suspicion of Catholic allegiance to the pope threatened John F. Kennedy’s presidential election; Kennedy made a point of affirming his belief in the separation of church and state during his campaign (for video of this speech see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/ program/190475-1 [Kennedy, 1960]).

Legal and Economic Dominance

The British also shaped economic consumption patterns and the American legal struc- ture. The colonies were significant importers of British finished goods, a fact that played a role in defining and shaping America’s material culture. Some colonial Americans drank English tea out of porcelain cups in isolated military outposts as well as in poorhouses. Many colonial women avidly followed English fashions in clothing and interior decora- tion. Many Americans at that time believed that the ability to buy whatever they wanted was an important part of political freedom and individualism; colonists therefore bristled when the English crown levied taxes on their goods (Breen, 2004). The colonists were also frustrated that they had extremely limited opportunities to make their voices heard back in England. “No taxation without representation” became an early battle cry for independence. Americans’ stress on liberty and property as core values drew on the ideas of English philosopher John Locke (1634–1702). In his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke made it clear that government existed for the benefit of those governed, who had a natural right to overthrow a government that deprived them of life, liberty, or property (Locke, 1689).

After the colonists won their independence, they established a representative govern- ment, as described in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This government was in many ways based on English common law (Hanft, 1995). The Revolutionary War inter- rupted commerce with England, but soon afterward Americans resumed their capitalist combination of innovation, industrialization, and mass consumption—with England as a substantial financial backer. England provided the lion’s share of foreign investment in American land and industrial development, railroads, mining, and cattle ranching from the late 18th century until at least the end of the 19th century.

© Visual & Written/SuperStock

This 19th-century print, engraved by W. Greatbach based on J. Trumbull’s painting, presents the men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Only one signer of the Declaration of Independence was Roman Catholic.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.4 Other British Groups

Contemporary English Immigration

Since the colonial period, British immigration to America has waxed and waned. Some Americans think of British immigration as having ended in the distant past, yet it is still ongoing. In the second half of the 20th century, a large number of skilled British workers and professionals immigrated to America, including writers, artists, entertainers, musi- cians, and journalists. Between 1997 and 2006, 13,000 British people immigrated to the United States each year, and about 8,300 of those became naturalized citizens (Klein, 2008a). Acculturation has been much easier for British immigrants to the United States than for immigrants from other countries (Hanft, 1995, p. 476).

3.4 Other British Groups

England was just one part of Britain and its colonial empire, which also included the Scots-Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. We will briefly consider these distinct Anglo ethnicities to develop a fuller picture of the ethnic history of the American establishment.

Figure 3.2: Countries of origin for Anglo immigrant groups

Canada

Australia

Scotland

Northern Ireland

Wales

Isle of Man

New Zealand

Countries of origin for Anglo immigrant groups

CHAPTER 3Section 3.4 Other British Groups

Scots-Irish

Americans of Scots-Irish descent now comprise only 1.5 percent of the U.S. population, but this group played a major role during the colonial period. The Scots-Irish, or Ulster Irish, were the descendants of 200,000 Scottish lowland Presbyterians whom the British crown helped settle in Northern Ireland during the 1600s. (In contrast, the Irish are from Southern Ireland, which was governed by Britain until 1917. Because most British saw the Irish as being fundamentally non-Anglo in regards to religion and culture, we will discuss the Irish in the next chapter.)

About 55,000 Scots-Irish came to the United States during the colonial period; many had money and skills and most were single males (Hess, 1995). Their numbers dramatically increased during the 18th century and “their migration represented the single largest movement of any group from the British Isles to British North America” (Griffin, 2001, p. 1). Although many Scots-Irish were fully assimilated by 1800, their initial arrival in New England, beginning in 1717, included many challenges. Many longer-established Americans stereotyped the Scots-Irish as “illiterate, slovenly, and filthy,” and as a result, many Scots-Irish faced violent persecution. In New England, mobs formed to prevent new arrivals from landing, and they destroyed one Scots-Irish Presbyterian meeting-

house. In 1725, a Boston newspaper wrote that the Scots-Irish “give us an ill opinion of foreign- ers, especially those coming from Ireland.” When the Scots-Irish moved on to Pennsylvania, they were accused of “squatting” on land belonging to German Americans—that is, occupying the land without paying rent. In Virginia and the Caroli- nas, many Scots-Irish had conflict-ridden encoun- ters with the Indians. For their part, some of the earliest Scots-Irish immigrants said that they “nurtured a profound hatred for the English” (McLemore & Romo, 2005, pp. 63–64).

Scots

The Scots came to America directly from Scotland and were generally a poorer group than the Scots- Irish. According to the first U.S. Census of 1790, Scots constituted 32.9 percent of the population of South Carolina and 8.7 percent of the population of Connecticut, totaling 150,000 in all the colonies. Skilled Scottish seamen had travelled to America in the early 1600s. Those who came later in the 17th century were either English war prisoners, criminals sent to work on the tobacco plantations, or indentured servants—laborers who were under contract to work for minimal wages for a fixed period that averaged seven years (Dobson, 1994, pp. 4–5). Indentured servants gave up their

© Everett Collection/SuperStock

Engraving of the hero of the book The Story of Jack Ballister’s Fortunes. Jack was sold into indentured servitude in 1719 by a cruel uncle; here he stands on the auction block, awaiting his sale.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.4 Other British Groups

freedom in return for travel expenses to America; for all living expenses; and, in the case of the most fortunate, for some financial payment at the end of their servitude. The sys- tem supplied labor needs for North American entrepreneurs and in exchange provided some Europeans an opportunity to come to the United States when they could not have otherwise afforded it. Many indentured servants were domestic servants, but others worked on farms and in manufacturing. After the contracted period, they were free to make their own way or to work for a different employer. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of indentured servitude, which had “a profound effect on the development of North America” (Powell, 2005, p. 145).

Unlike the Scots-Irish, who tended to emigrate as single males, the Scots travelled in clans, or net- works of extended families claiming a common forbear. Each clan had a chief, as well as distinc- tive tartan patterns and heraldry. (A tartan is a pattern woven in wool with multiple colors and horizontal and vertical stripes, as you see in Scot- tish kilts.) Often, most members of a clan shared the same last name—a tradition that persisted into the 19th century, when clan members in Kentucky and Tennessee had to use their middle names to distinguish themselves because first and last names recurred so often. The strongly shared identities within clans prolonged dis- putes between different clans, the most extreme of which may have been the Hatfield and McCoy feud in the Tug River Valley between West Vir- ginia and Kentucky, which achieved national notoriety during the 1880s (Rice, 1982; Hess, 1995, pp. 1204–5).

After the Revolutionary War and during the 19th century, Scottish immigration to the United States declined and many Scots chose to immigrate to Canada instead. During the 20th century, many Scots resumed direct immigration to the United States, but their numbers were not disaggregated from the immigration totals computed for the United Kingdom (Powell, 2005). Almost 5 million Americans claimed Scottish ancestry in 2000.

Welsh

In his 1888 book The American Commonwealth, James Brice wrote that English, Welsh, and Scottish immigrants to America were “absorbed into the general mass of native citizens” and thereby lost “their identity almost immediately” (Brice, 1891, p. 33). This is odd in some respects because there were so many immigrants from these places. But as one recent scholar wrote, their “political footprint was invisible” because they were less active in political struggles than other ethnic groups, and when they did vote, their political

© Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

In 1943, L. Lawson Hatfield squats by a tree where his family stuffed dead bodies— perhaps including those of the McCoys, with whom the Hatfields notoriously feuded.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.4 Other British Groups

choices were frequently similar to those of “average” Americans’ (Lewis, 2008, p. 5). Still, many Scots and Welsh did try to keep alive their old-country cultural traditions.

Wales is a mountainous peninsula on the island of Great Britain; it is about the size of New Jersey with a population today of about 3 million (Williamson, 2011). The Welsh were adventurous explorers and missionaries, who are said to have crossed the Atlan- tic before Columbus and mixed with Native Americans (Heimlich, 1995; Curran, 2010). A plaque posted by the Daughters of the American Revolution on the public strand of Mobile Bay in Alabama now reads: “In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language” (cited by Heimlich, 1995, p. 1411).

Nineteenth-century Welsh immigrants to the United States were already skilled industrial workers. They mined anthracite in Pennsylvania and New York, produced tinplate in Phil- adelphia and Ohio, quarried slate in New York and Vermont, and farmed in the Midwest, California, and, finally, Oregon. Some were Quakers—a Protestant sect that simplified the pomp of the Church of England—and many of the earliest Mormons were of Welsh descent. By about 1900, most Welsh immigrants had assimilated into mainstream Ameri- can society (Heimlich, 1995), having been welcomed by the English settlers. According to the U.S. Census 2008 Community Survey, 6 percent of the American population, or 1.98 million Americans, claimed Welsh ancestry (U.S. Census, 2008; Smith, 2003).

Manx

In contrast to the large number of Welsh Americans, in 1980, only 50,000 Americans claimed Manx ancestry (Orlov, 1980). Manx come from the Isle of Man, a land mass of 227 square miles that is equidistant from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In 2006, the population of the Isle of Man was about 80,000 (Isle of Man Digest, 2011). Since 1980, there has been little new study of Manx immigration. However, because some Manx converted to the reli- gion of Mormonism, historical records about them are available at the Mormon archives in Salt Lake City (Manxmormons.com, 2011) as well as the Western Reserve Historical Society Library in Cleveland, Ohio (Holden, 2003). The Manx language, which became extinct in 1974, was a blend of Celtic and Norse. Manx are mainly Anglican Protestants.

The first Manx immigrant to the colonies was Miles Standish (1584–1656), who served as a military advisor to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and later as a military advisor to the Plymouth colony. The North American Manx Association celebrated its 50th anniversary in Cleveland in 1978 and maintains a website (Orlov, 1980; North American Manx Asso- ciation, 2011). The Bulletin of the North American Manx Association had the mission “to pre- serve whate’er is left of us of ancient heritage” (Orlov, 1980, p. 697).

Canadians

France and England colonized Canada in the 16th century and today Canada remains part of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Canada and the United States share a 5,525-mile border, defining the American northern and Canadian southern boundaries. About two and a half million Canadians came to the United States between 1850 and 1900; between

CHAPTER 3Section 3.4 Other British Groups

1930 and 2000, another two and a half million arrived. Canadians are the immigrant group least likely to become U.S. citizens, but the 500,000 to 800,000 who now live in the United States are well assimilated (Klein, 2008a; Fedunkiw, 1995).

Australians and New Zealanders

Although Australia and New Zealand are separate, sovereign nations, immigration from these countries to the United States is often lumped together. This is likely because both countries are former colonies of England, they’re very close to each other on the world map, and the num- ber of immigrants to the United States from Australia and New Zealand is relatively small. In 2008, about 99,000 Ameri- cans claimed Australian descent and 16,000 claimed New Zealand descent (U.S. Census, 2008). Because Australia and New Zealand are former British colonies, most of the immi- grants from these countries are of English or Scots-Irish descent. There were two strong waves of Australian and New Zealand immigration: The first was between 1849 and 1850, as up to 8,000 immigrants came from these countries to California in search for gold. Some of the Australian immigrants, known as “Sydney Ducks,” were convicts who had been sent to Australia from England. They settled in a San Francisco neighborhood called the Barbary Coast. Some locals described them with fear and scorn:

These foreign felons gave San Francisco’s underworld its initial flavor; they were pioneers in the viciousness and depravity for which the Barbary Coast became famous. . . . The more commercial spirits among the Sydney Ducks opened lodging-houses, dance-halls, groggeries, and taverns.  .  .  . Drunkenness, robbery, and all manner of strife and lewdness went on in these places. (Parkin, 1850/1980, p. 163)

After World War II, another 11,650 Australians and New Zealanders immigrated to the United States. Many of these were so-called “war brides”—women who had married U.S. servicemen who had been stationed in the South Pacific during the war (Parkin, 1980).

In the 20th century, Australian and New Zealand immigrants have assimilated very eas- ily, with over 30 percent of them living in California, which is similar in terrain to both Australia and New Zealand. They share immigrants from the British Isles’ ability to blend into an Anglo-dominant culture in the United States.

© age fotostock/SuperStock

This Peace Arch marks the U.S.–Canadian border between Washington and British Columbia. Security at all border points has increased since 9/11.

CHAPTER 3Section 3.5 Anglo Identity and Style Today

3.5 Anglo Identity and Style Today

It is clear that the American British Protestant group dominated U.S. society politically, economically, and culturally during the colonial period. But, so-called Anglo domi-nance may seem less obvious today. Many non-Anglos hold public office, and while white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) are often more likely than other American eth-

nic group members to succeed economically, culturally, and politically, there has also been plenty of upward mobility for the descendants of non-English European immigrants. Also, not all WASPs have enjoyed equal levels of success. For instance, inhabitants of Appa- lachia are still mostly of Eng- lish and Scots-Irish descent, yet they struggled with pov- erty and inadequate education throughout the 20th century (Williams, 2002), and they still struggle today. It is reasonable to ask whether Anglo domi- nance still exists, and, if so, how this dominance influences soci- ety today.

Identity

Sociologist Lewis Killian has noted that the “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant remains the typical American, the model to which other Americans are expected and encouraged to conform” (Killian, 1975, p. 16). Today, Anglo identity is a symbol, often mythological, of the “average American.” It often works as a stereotype for success—not solely because of appearance or language abilities, but because of the assumption that Anglos have had social and educational opportunities that enable them to create wealth, patent inventions, and make other valued contributions. But the reality behind this identity is that much of the United States was built, and continues to be defined, by people who in many ways do not conform to Anglo identity.

Aspects of Anglo identity can now be “signaled” by people of all racial and ethnic groups by their manner of speech, clothing, and behavior. Anchors of nightly news programs

tend to speak with what is considered “no accent,” dress in business suits, and maintain a generally conservative “Anglo-style” appearance. Most civic and corporate leaders also conform to Anglo conventions of speech and per- sonal style.

© iStockphoto/Thinkstock

This abandoned schoolhouse in Appalachia evokes the poverty and deprivation still experienced by many of British descent who live in Appalachia.

Think About It

What does Anglo identity symbolize today?

CHAPTER 3Section 3.5 Anglo Identity and Style Today

Style

Style is an aesthetic mode of self-presentation, and it can reflect differences in status and power. At any given time, the right style can make a person or group popular, and new popular styles can influence cultural change. For example, during the 1960s, clothing styles for men became more relaxed and expressive as clothes for women became more revealing (e.g., the miniskirt). These changes can be seen as signaling a relaxation of tradi- tional gender roles and increasing economic and sexual equality in American society (DeKoven, 2004). Since then, Americans have become more relaxed in self-presentation through almost uni- versal casual dress styles. Americans of different ages, social classes, and income groups may wear T-shirts and jeans, making it somewhat more dif- ficult to determine status based on appearance than it used to be. However, there are certainly expensive designer versions of casual wear, and many are adept at identifying expensive clothes that look casual.

Anglo style used to be exclusive; recent changes suggest that many non-Anglo Americans no longer see themselves as excluded from Anglo or WASP society. For instance, previously, when Anglos were more overtly culturally dominant, the reigning “preppy” style was reserved for the clothing of adolescents who attended prep schools—elite high schools that prepared them for prestigious Ivy League colleges. However, during the last quarter of the 20th century, preppy dress became a more universally accessible style. Some of its iconic symbols are plaids; well-made outdoor clothing; and tailored outfits made pri- marily out of natural fibers such as wool, cotton, silk, and linen.

Controversial Issues in Race & Ethnicity: The New Preppy Handbook

When Lisa Birnbach and her two coauthors released The Official Preppy Handbook in 1980, they intended to poke fun at the traditional upper-middle class American lifestyle. Indeed, the ironic refer- ence book was marketed as “a facetious guide to emulating the look, speech patterns, thinking, and lifestyle of those who attend prep schools and are a part of high society.” To Birnbach’s surprise, how- ever, The Official Preppy Handbook became a bestseller, acting as a guidebook for those who wanted to achieve the preppy look (Rich, 2010).

Three decades later, in 2010, Birnbach released a sequel, called True Prep: It’s a Whole New Old World, which was advertised as an update of the 1980 version, “tracing how [the prep world] had adapted to such modern challenges as the Internet, cell phones, and political correctness” (Birnbach,

© Fancy Collection/SuperStock

This young couple relaxing on the grass are wearing “preppy” clothes, although they may or may not be students at a prep school.

CHAPTER 3Summing Up and Looking Ahead

Anglo style, while still hugely popular, is no longer racially exclusive. Anglo style has become just one style choice among many—for the many. It may still be preferred, without irony, in the offices of top-tier law firms and the board rooms of Fortune 500 companies, but the people who work in those places are not all Anglo Americans or WASPs. Milton Gordon’s 7th level of civic assimilation, mentioned earlier in the chapter, is now acces- sible to individuals from all groups. That fact in itself heralds “a whole new old world,” even though it is still easier for members of some ethnic groups and social classes to gain this access than for others.

We are left with three questions. First, does accessible Anglo style mean Anglo confor- mity—compliance with the lifestyle, goals, public values, and private customs of the British-American establishment? The ease with which other groups can imitate Anglos means more Anglo conformity, but it may mean less Anglo dominance as the style is incorporated into broader American cultural contexts. Second, does the inclusion of non- Anglos in elite contexts weaken Anglo values and signify less Anglo dominance? Like the issue of style, this inclusion represents a broadening of Anglo values, because now other groups can participate in these contexts and maybe also import their own values into them. But this change could also mean that Anglo style is still dominant enough to be willingly taken up by newcomers. Third, can ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimina- tion continue to operate after individuals from previously excluded groups are integrated into elite contexts? The answer to this question is yes. Although prejudice and discrimina- tion may no longer keep non-Anglos out of an elite group, these factors may still work against non-Anglos once they get in. Also, access to elite contexts is still not equal for nonwhite, non-Anglo Americans.

Summing Up and Looking Ahead

In the early 1970s, Charlotte Erickson coined a term that aptly describes the non-Irish immigrants from the British Isles (Erickson, 1972). She called them the “invisible immigrants” because they were “persons who could all but disappear into the mass of the American people almost as soon as they arrived” (Daniels, 2002, p. 212). We have seen in this chapter how these immigrants did indeed become “invisible” because they assimi- lated into the Anglo-dominant culture. Even Australian immigrants “blend easily into mainstream American” culture and maintain this trend of invisibility (Powell, 2005, p. 18).

During the American colonial period, through the Revolutionary period, and into the 19th century, the political structure and social customs of America became very similar to those of Britain. Americans of British descent had substantial reasons to believe that

2010). Another update, however, was its depiction of racial diversity and preppy style. While Birnbach did not explicitly mention race in her 1980 book, the illustrations appeared to depict a society mainly comprised of white people (Birnbach, 1980). In the 2010 version, however, Asian Americans and Afri- can Americans are a part of the preppy class in the illustrations, and a full section is devoted to “black preppies” (Rich, 2010).

What Do You Think?

If you are familiar with the preppy style, do you consider it to be an Anglo style? Is it important that media such as books, advertisements, and television shows reflect people of different ethnic groups?

CHAPTER 3Key Terms

America was their country. By the 19th and early 20th centuries, when new immigrants began arriving in substantial numbers from Europe, they were expected to assimilate into this Anglo establishment. By the late 20th century, Anglo culture was universal and acces- sible to Americans who were not of British descent. Anglo culture dominated in govern- ment, business, higher education, and even personal style choices. Members of new eth- nic groups and nonwhite races joined institutions of power, gained wealth, and acquired knowledge that Anglo Americans had previously reserved for themselves. However, this fact does not necessarily mean that Anglo Americans have treated the relative newcomers as full equals. In the next chapter, we will focus on European immigrants to America who were far more “visible” than the groups we have just described and how factors such as culture, language, and religion made assimilation into Anglo America extremely difficult.

Web Links

Read the entirety of Georg Simmel’s essay about the concept of the stranger on this webpage:

http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/courses/STRANGER.HTML

The unshaded states in this USA Today map still hold to Puritan liquor laws:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-19-sundayliquor19_ST_N.htm

English professor Susan J. Dicker offers a linguistic perspective on how assimilation and Anglo conformity affect today’s immigrants.

http://sdonline.org/48/us-immigrants-and-the-dilemma-of-anglo-conformity/

In this video, authors Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd talk about preparing their True Prep (the updated edition of the facetious The Official Preppy Handbook) for publication.

http://knopf.knopfdoubleday.com/2010/09/07/ true-prep-by-lisa-birnbach-with-chip-kidd-2/

Key Terms

Anglo conformity Compliance with the lifestyle, goals, public values, and private customs of Americans of British descent.

Anglo identity Characteristics tradition- ally associated with Americans of British descent.

classic ethnic theory Milton Gordon’s theory that assimilation occurs in seven stages. Sociologists now consider the theory inadequate for fully studying the immigrant experience and apply it only to Anglo and European immigrant groups.

cultural assimilation The first stage in classic ethnic theory. The process by which an immigrant becomes integrated into society by learning the dominant language and basic rules and customs.

indentured servants Laborers who were under contract to work for minimal wages for a fixed period that averaged seven years.

naturalization Legal process by which an immigrant becomes a U.S. citizen.

CHAPTER 3Key Terms

pull factors Positive factors that motivate immigration to a new place, such as more freedom, wealth, or relatives who already live in the destination country.

push factors Negative factors that moti- vate immigration to a new place, such as war, religious persecution, and famine.

structural assimilation The second stage in classic ethnic theory. The process by which an immigrant becomes integrated into a society by becoming part of its public institutions and important private organizations. The process takes place on primary and secondary levels.

WASPs White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

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