AMERICAN ROOTS:
IMMIGRATION, RACIALIZATION AND ETHNIC IDENTITY
CES 304/HISTORY 314
Fall 2006
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12-1:15pm
Todd Hall 226
Professor José M. Alamillo
Wilson Hall 120
(509) 335-4793
alamillo@wsu.edu
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 11am-12noon
Teaching Assistant: Ryan Nordstrand
E-mail: rnord@mail.wsu.edu
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course provides a historical understanding of immigration, racialization, and ethnic identity in the United States from 1882 to the present. The first part examines the exclusion and restriction eras of U.S. immigration policy from 1882 to World War II. We will consider how economic interests, scientific and biological theories of race, gender biases, and fears of “foreigners” played a crucial role in the decision to admit, examine, deny, deport, and naturalize and assimilate certain immigrants. Then we will explore how European immigrants came to understand themselves as “white” during the 1920s and 1930s when immigration laws became more restrictive and New Deal reforms were implemented and racially restrictive covenants were imposed in all-white neighborhoods. During the same period, we will also focus on the Filipino immigrant experience in Seattle and American West focusing on role of U.S. imperialism, anti-miscegenation laws, gender relations, social networks and labor organizing.
The second part of the course examines the post-World War II period when the United States reconsidered its explicitly racist and sexist discriminatory immigration laws. Motivated by cold war politics, wartime refugees, civil rights movement, and promotion of democracy over totalitarian regimes, the United States eliminated the national origins quota system under the 1965 Immigration Act. In the post-1965 period the largest immigrant groups have originated from Asia and Latin America so for the remaining weeks we will examine the experiences of Vietnamese Refugees and Mexican Immigrants. Throughout the course we will read and discuss how the immigrant experience has reshaped the ethnic identity of immigrants themselves and the notion of what it means to be “American” in today’s society.
COURSE GOALS:
1) Introduce students to how U.S. immigration policies and immigrant groups have undergone a process of racialization with implications for American society.
2) Help students understand their families’ immigration and ethnic roots within the context of U.S. immigration history.
3) To understand how immigrants and their descendants undergo a process of constructing new ethnic and national identities.