50 Years of Assimilation: From the Midwest to the Wild West and All the Blackness & Whiteness in Between

50 Years of Assimilation: From the Midwest to the Wild West and All the Blackness & Whiteness in Between PDF Author: Wanda Lee-Stevens
Publisher: Sunny Day Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 9781948613026
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Author Wanda Lee-Stevens was born in 1963, the same year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech called for citizens of all colors to have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream. In 50 Years of Assimilation, she explores her own pursuit of The Dream in the form of an open letter to Dr. King. Her book chronicles her life, from her loving childhood home in Detroit during the turbulent '60s and '70s, all the way across the country to her adulthood in the progressive and multicultural San Francisco Bay area. She relies on her Detroit sensibilities to navigate the challenges of education, work, friendships, and family, always with the goal of getting in, fitting in, and making it. Along the way, the author asks Dr. King, "is this what you saw? Is this what you meant?" She explores the psychology of how we Americans seek Dr. King's "freedom" within the societal confines of race, racism, and post-Civil Rights (and "post-racial") confusion. In 50 Years of Assimilation, Wanda Lee-Stevens poses timely and urgent questions: What does MLK's dream of freedom look like in the 21st century? And are we really living out our Dream?

50 Years of Assimilation: From the Midwest to the Wild West and All the Blackness & Whiteness in Between

50 Years of Assimilation: From the Midwest to the Wild West and All the Blackness & Whiteness in Between PDF Author: Wanda Lee-Stevens
Publisher: Sunny Day Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 9781948613026
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book

Book Description
Author Wanda Lee-Stevens was born in 1963, the same year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech called for citizens of all colors to have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream. In 50 Years of Assimilation, she explores her own pursuit of The Dream in the form of an open letter to Dr. King. Her book chronicles her life, from her loving childhood home in Detroit during the turbulent '60s and '70s, all the way across the country to her adulthood in the progressive and multicultural San Francisco Bay area. She relies on her Detroit sensibilities to navigate the challenges of education, work, friendships, and family, always with the goal of getting in, fitting in, and making it. Along the way, the author asks Dr. King, "is this what you saw? Is this what you meant?" She explores the psychology of how we Americans seek Dr. King's "freedom" within the societal confines of race, racism, and post-Civil Rights (and "post-racial") confusion. In 50 Years of Assimilation, Wanda Lee-Stevens poses timely and urgent questions: What does MLK's dream of freedom look like in the 21st century? And are we really living out our Dream?

Making the White Man's West

Making the White Man's West PDF Author: Jason E. Pierce
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607323966
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The West, especially the Intermountain states, ranks among the whitest places in America, but this fact obscures the more complicated history of racial diversity in the region. In Making the White Man’s West, author Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space. Using a nuanced theory of historical “whiteness,” he examines why and how Anglo-Americans dominated the region for a 120-year period. In the early nineteenth century, critics like Zebulon Pike and Washington Irving viewed the West as a “dumping ground” for free blacks and Native Americans, a place where they could be segregated from the white communities east of the Mississippi River. But as immigrant populations and industrialization took hold in the East, white Americans began to view the West as a “refuge for real whites.” The West had the most diverse population in the nation with substantial numbers of American Indians, Hispanics, and Asians, but Anglo-Americans could control these mostly disenfranchised peoples and enjoy the privileges of power while celebrating their presence as providing a unique regional character. From this came the belief in a White Man’s West, a place ideally suited for “real” Americans in the face of changing world. The first comprehensive study to examine the construction of white racial identity in the West, Making the White Man’s West shows how these two visions of the West—as a racially diverse holding cell and a white refuge—shaped the history of the region and influenced a variety of contemporary social issues in the West today.

How the West Was White-Washed

How the West Was White-Washed PDF Author: C.T. Kirk
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1665502320
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
The American West is often seen from the historical accounts recorded from the beginning of the Civil War to after the Reconstruction Era. Many of the accounts include historians that promote a European/Anglo-Saxon perspective; these accounts have often led readers to stereotypical perspectives concerning minorities. These accounts also give birth to the “white savior” concept in which white men assume the role as savior to lesser races in movies, such as saving the African Americans during slavery or in the case of many White Westerners: being the hero to Native American people. Hollywood’s portrayal of Westerners did not happen by accident, but many historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries purposely ignored the accounts and contributions of other races. The narrative trope of the white savior is one way the mass communications medium of cinema represents the sociology of race and ethnic relations, by presenting abstract concepts such as morality as characteristics innate, racially and culturally, to white people, not to be found in non-white people. In other words, had Hollywood sought accurate information and represented it in the narratives for shows like The Lone Ranger, the show would have been cast with an African American actor since the role was based solely on the life of black lawman, Bass Reeves. A White Savior film is often based on some supposedly true story. Second, it features a nonwhite group or person who experiences conflict and struggle with others that is particularly dangerous or threatening to their life and livelihood.

Gangs, Fraud, and Sexual Predators

Gangs, Fraud, and Sexual Predators PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform. Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description


Radical Brown

Radical Brown PDF Author: Margaret Beale Spencer
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1682538729
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
A rallying cry for equitable education informed by a revolutionary re-reading of Brown v. Board of Education, on the 70th anniversary of the ruling

Blood Will Tell

Blood Will Tell PDF Author: Katherine Ellinghaus
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 149623037X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
A study of the role blood quantum played in the assimilation period between 1887 and 1934 in the United States.

Handbook of Asian American/Pacific Islander Mental Health

Handbook of Asian American/Pacific Islander Mental Health PDF Author: National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asian Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description


White Into Red

White Into Red PDF Author: Joseph Norman Heard
Publisher: Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description


The Wages of Whiteness

The Wages of Whiteness PDF Author: David R. Roediger
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789603137
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
An enduring history of how race and class came together to mark the course of the antebellum US and our present crisis. Roediger shows that in a nation pledged to independence, but less and less able to avoid the harsh realities of wage labor, the identity of "white" came to allow many Northern workers to see themselves as having something in common with their bosses. Projecting onto enslaved people and free Blacks the preindustrial closeness to pleasure that regimented labor denied them, "white workers" consumed blackface popular culture, reshaped languages of class, and embraced racist practices on and off the job. Far from simply preserving economic advantage, white working-class racism derived its terrible force from a complex series of psychological and ideological mechanisms that reinforced stereotypes and helped to forge the very identities of white workers in opposition to Blacks. Full of insight regarding the precarious positions of not-quite-white Irish immigrants to the US and the fate of working class abolitionism, Wages of Whiteness contributes mightily and soberly to debates over the 1619 Project and critical race theory.

From Immigrants to Americans

From Immigrants to Americans PDF Author: Jacob L. Vigdor
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 144220138X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Immigration has always caused immense public concern, especially when the perception is that immigrants are not assimilating into society they way they should, or perhaps the way they once did. Americans are frustrated as they try to order food, hire laborers, or simply talk to someone they see on the street and cannot communicate with them because the person is an immigrant who has not fully adopted American culture or language. But is this truly a modern phenomenon? In From Immigrants to Americans, Jacob Vigdor offers a direct comparison of the experiences of immigrants in the United States from the mid-19th century to the present day. His conclusions are both unexpected and fascinating. Vigdor shows how the varying economic situations immigrants come from has always played an important role in their assimilation. The English language skills of contemporary immigrants are actually quite good compared to the historical average, but those who arrive without knowing English are learning at slower rates. He continues to argue that todayOs immigrants face far fewer OincentivesO to assimilate and offers a set of assimilation friendly policies. From Immigrants to Americans is an important book for anyone interested in immigration, either the history or the modern implications, or who want to understand why todayOs immigrants seem so different from previous generations of immigrants and how much they are the same. Co-published with the Manhattan Institute