CHAPTER 1

RACISM ANDETHNIC MYTHS

Racial beliefs and practices harm large segments of our population.Yet few of us see society's current state as unnatural or unjust;most deny that race or other structural forces limit the life chancesof individuals and groups. We do not believe that our attitudesor actions are based on racial considerations. Instead, race hasbecome commonsense: accepted but barely noticed, there thoughnot important, an established fact that we lack the responsibility,let alone the power, to change. The color line has come to seem afiction, so little do we apprehend its daily mayhem.

Ian F. Haney López, Racism on Trial

The United States has a fabled history of immigration, culturally signified inthe sonnet by Emma Lazarus, who implores foreign nations to send "your tired,your poor, / your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / the wretched refuseof your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, / I liftmy lamp beside the golden door!" in a "world-wide welcome" to them all. Thesonnet is inscribed on the interior of the pedestal of the "Mother of Exiles"(as the verse names the Statue of Liberty). This iconic sonnet encapsulates themythos that the United States is a nation built on the labor of immigrants andstill welcomes immigrants from around the world. Histories that look at thetravails of nonwhites since the inception of the first Thirteen Colonies and onuntil today could testify that the reality has never quite lived up to the wordsthat Lazarus issued from the Statue of Liberty's "silent lips." Those histories,instead, read as a complex contest for resources, one that was from the beginningcontextualized in a language that demarked the deserving from the undeserving,arranging the humans involved into unequal ethnic groups.

The American polity is legendarily characterized as a "melting pot," a nationbrought together under Lady Liberty's torch of enlightenment and crownof seven spires (representing the seven continents and seven seas), welcomingthe world's "tired" and "poor" who are willing to work or "pull themselves up bytheir bootstraps." Although people from all over the world have come and stillcome to "America" (read "the United States") to restructure their lives, they arenot all seen as equally endowed with the ability to fit in or become American.For example, the American Protestant Association (APA1) was formed in fearfulresponse to the spread of Catholicism, which they believed was "subversive ofcivil and religious liberty," in 1842 in Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love."The American Protective Association (APA2, formed in 1887 with an identicalagenda) never saw any of its favored legislation passed but claimed two millionmembers in 1895. Members of APA1 were encouraged to swear that they woulddenounce the Catholic Church, never join a workers' strike with a Catholic,and never knowingly allow a Catholic to join the association; APA2 sought toban Catholics from elected office, remove Catholic teachers from schools, andmake speaking English a prerequisite for citizenship. These sentiments aboutwho made appropriate compatriots were far from isolated. At around the sametime, the U.S. government instituted the first of many laws declaring populationsinappropriate for immigration, naming the Chinese as the first ethnic/national-origin group to be so deemed. Still, Catholics kept coming, as did theChinese and other previously undesirable migrants, even though they receivedunequal welcomes and were not equally considered real "Americans."

But that does not mean that each group would prefer and eagerly adoptthe unhyphenated version of the term "(ethnic)-American" in lieu of theirother ethnic options, for many are quite fond of and embrace their separateethnic identities. Well, that is true to a point. We have known for some timethat people will change ethnic identifiers as they pick and choose among possibleancestries in order to portray themselves in the most positive light. MaryWaters (1990), in her book Ethnic Options, explains how people decide whichethnicities to choose, preferring, for example, to say they are "part-French" butfailing to acknowledge that they're also part-Polish.

How do some ethnicities become more desirable and others less so? Howwere all these ethnic groups incorporated into the American polity and howdo we develop legend and lore about who is better than whom? Despite theinequality that persists among ethnic groups in the United States, ethnic conflictis minimal compared to many other parts of the world. How has incorporationoccurred with so little ethnic conflict? And what does the process ofethnic group inclusion and the differential outcomes tell us about how oursociety is organized? Is there a way to explain differences in outcomes that canbe reasonably applied to several cases?

Two interrelated histories can provide answers to these questions. The first isa demographic record of the lands that comprise the United States of America,one that involves encounters with people who were living their lives when theywere "discovered" by Europeans who chose conquest over community alongwith voluntary and forced migrations. A chronicle of the inclusion or incorporationof these disparate peoples, the circumstances that brought them here,and what happened to them afterward is helpful in interpreting the commonalitiesand differences among groups of various ethnicities. The second historyexplains how these people from the Americas and lands farther away were drawntogether into an economically and socially stratified American society. Thesejoint histories frame the ways various groups were differentially integrated intoAmerican society. But if incorporation has happened for nearly all groups inU.S. history, why is ethnicity still relevant? My answer is that these histories describethe racial and economic interactions that have kept ethnic, racial, gender,and class divisions alive, allowing them to persist even beyond the births anddeaths of generations of now-homegrown "Americans" who remain ethnicized.

We have mostly folkloric histories about who got here and when, and whysome succeed and others do not, all retold as if people used only their will andwits to make a living and create a legacy. In these histories we find that someethnic groups have been able to achieve a kind of racial uplift and have the restof society think of them with a much-improved racial status. Perhaps the catchytitle of Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White makes Irish American historythe best-known example of racial uplift for persons who were first consideredblack-equivalents but have since become whitened, but there are other relevanthistories (e.g., those of the Chinese and Mexicans). Some achieve true or pseudo-whiteness,and some do not. For example, the Chinese were once so hated thatwe started closing our borders against them using our first immigration laws;now, Americans of means seek out Chinese children to adopt and love themas their own. Many who we now think of as racially worthy (the Irish, Greeks,Japanese, Chinese, etc.) have started at the racial hierarchy's "bottom" and moved"up" over time. What accounts for the success of those who become our ethnicheroes by reaching status positions higher than the positions they had when firstincorporated, while others remain in low status positions and become our ethnicvillains? Which groups rise so high as to reach the hierarchy's very top categoryand become white, and how did they accomplish it? Which ones have not, andwhy? Physical difference/similarity alone cannot be responsible, because formernonwhite groups (like the Irish and Polish) were also once believed to be whollyracially different in appearance from "white," and some (perhaps the Chinese)seem unable to achieve total whiteness but have achieved mobility nonetheless.What explains this?

ETHNIC PROJECTS

In specific historical moments various outsider groups undertook concertedsocial action (namely, an "ethnic project") to foster a perception of themselvesas "different" from the bottom and "similar" to the top of that racial hierarchy.Ethnic groups are variously successful at this enterprise. Ethnic projects succeedto the degree that the dominant population accepts that the new groupis culturally or racially different enough from the hierarchical bottom to merita recognizable "ethnicity," which itself references the dominant society's use ofdifferent racial overtones. If one's project is successful, it provides group memberssome relief from the pejorative labels, damning prejudices, and exclusionarypractices that had originally plagued the group.

Although many ethnic groups have made attempts to achieve "racial uplift"in this way, only a few have been successful. The theory of the ethnicproject can be summarized as follows. An ethnic group begins as a collectionof a significant number of "outsiders" who poorly fit into the racial frame thatis operative at the time of their insertion into their geographic communities.As "strangers," members of the group are first identified as equivalent to the"bottom of the barrel," racially speaking. The European colonizers of NorthAmerica are the exception: they created the system of racial domination andput themselves at the top; they neither experienced incorporation, nor can theybe considered a minority group; and only racial subordinates require incorporationas minority groups. Most ethnic groups incorporated into the UnitedStates since the colonial era are looked down upon at the time of incorporationand given very low racial status—this we call "racialization." For example,those nations that occupied the North American landmass before Europeanconquest (variously grouped as a single ethnicity called "Native Americans" or"First Nations") were branded as savages, albeit sometimes "noble" ones. Thesavage ideation remained, even after some groups (namely the Cherokee andthe Choctaw, among others) adapted the ways of transplanted Europeans, givingup their indigenous lifestyles in a futile attempt to preserve their existenceand save their own lives. The Europeans who proselytized about the ways of"civilization," and who promised to spare cultural adapters, instead betrayedthem. They did the same to those Native American nations who were less culturallymalleable. In not so different fashion, albeit with different outcomes,Greek and Polish immigrants were seen as the worst kinds of brutes, uneducablebut useful because of their ability to labor at "what would kill a white man."

Ethnic project theory argues that many racialized groups (some immigrant,some native-born) launch similar campaigns for "racial uplift," but specific factorsaccount for a group's success or failure in these efforts. A group's success ispredicated on its ability to benefit from the marginalization initially designedto segregate the group and deny its members access to the socioeconomic opportunitiesand rewards that those at the top of the racial hierarchy are routinelygranted. That is, groups that succeed take the racial structure as a given andprimarily work to change only their place in it.

Ethnoracial groups hopeful for ethnic project success undertook somesubset of activities intended to foster relationships separate from and possiblysuperior to ethnic nonwhite others. In some cases groups used theirworkplace and neighborhood relationships with African Americans to showthose deemed to be "white" that they were not themselves also "black." Theyproved themselves to be nonblack by ostracizing and in some cases brutalizingtheir black neighbors, friends, spouses, children, and coworkers. Theyseparated themselves from supposed racial inferiors by self-segregating theirresidences, workplaces, and sites of leisure. Many took the added step of forbiddingintermarriage between themselves and (only) racial inferiors. Theychose to protect and maintain their racial superiority by enforcing a raciallabeling that was intended to make the aforementioned racialized/racializingsegregation commonsensical. Occupations, neighborhoods, and activities werelabeled according to the racial hierarchy—as "white," "civilized," or "cultured"as opposed to "black," "savage," "heathen," or "street." Chinese immigrantsin the Mississippi Delta, Mexicans in Texas, and the Irish in the NortheasternUnited States all had lived among and intermarried with African Americans,yet to achieve racial uplift they decided to segregate themselves residentially,occupationally, and romantically from the "blacks" with whom they had beenformerly conjoined and compared.

In their quest for increased racial status, ethnic groups with successful strategiesdid not threaten to bring down the racial status quo. Successful groups onlysought to raise their own status within the hierarchy and did not question thelegitimacy of racialized thinking or human hierarchies. For example, Mississippi'sChinese chose to open retail stores and become economic middlemen,refusing to sharecrop any longer alongside African Americans. But neither didthey argue against the existence of the sharecropping system, the unfair advantagewhites took, or the maltreatment of blacks who were left with sharecroppingas their only employment alternative. In similar fashion, the Irish saidthat they would no longer work with blacks because Irishmen now "did whitemen's work." In sum, racial status-seekers appeal to the hierarchy's racial superiorsregarding their group's racial worth, and they often offer justificationsregarding the worthlessness of racial inferiors. Even ethnic groups who haveattained "whiteness" and wished to secure their position regularly reassert theirsuperiority. Only Native Americans and African Americans made appeals to theequality of men and women of all races, yet in choosing this (failing) universalhuman rights strategy to combat racial enmity, they were certainly unrewarded.

Of course, not everyone in a group automatically agreed to compliance.Thus, ethnicized seekers of higher status would commonly institute mechanismsof punishment for those within their own group who would ignore theincipient or ongoing ethnic project and instead trespass over hierarchicallylower color lines—through varied attempts to inappropriately fraternize orcooperate with racial "others." For example, Mississippi Delta Chinese wouldostracize those in their group who would not break off romantic liaisons withAfrican American mates, spouses, or co-parents. Similar actions took placeamong Mexican and Irish intermarried groupings. White women who refusedto leave the Native American families they joined often were labeled kidnapvictims, bringing to their new families violence from white families of originwho wanted their kin "back home."

Unsuccessful ethnic projects, though they may have done many or all of thesesame things, are characterized by the fact that they have not, to date, gained highracial status for their group. The reason some have not triumphed is that theirethnic project efforts actually threaten the racial status quo. In their endeavorsto raise their status, groups who pose a threat to the racial hierarchy itself mustfail if those who dominate the racial system are to retain their power.

HOW AN ETHNIC GROUPCOMES TO BE RECOGNIZED AS SUCH

The basis for all these projects is ethnoracial mythmaking, which creates anethnic group and racial lore to characterize the group. For such mythmaking tosucceed, there needs to be a demographically significant subpopulation that islarge and sociologically significant enough to require the group to be identifiedby a name, a creation story that explains how they got here, and a justificationfor their place in the society into which they are incorporated. This process ofmythmaking has several steps that can be identified for the purposes of making itrecognizable. Not all steps are required, nor is there a singular sequence to them.