Melting Pot Notes 03 27 2013 What makes race is the laws and opportunities for success based on racial differences US has always been highly racialized slavery conquest of Native Americans therefore immigrants have to fit into the racialized society Inferior races blacks Hispanics Chinese often used as cheap laborers but also feared The immigrant became the symbol for what America might turn in to as a nation Charles Davenport o The pop of the US based on the influx of Eastern European blood will become shorter and subject to larceny murder rape and insanity o Many theories arose in the 1920s Biology was destiny Between 1890 and 1920 2500 African Americans were lynched in the South The Melting Pot into America Suggested that immigrants from Europe were seen as in between people not fully white compared to Anglo Saxon Americans o god would melt down the races of Europe and turn the result After the Civil War African Americans were given US citizenship o However they were still treated as second class citizens o To be fully white was to reap the entire benefits of being an American citizen US courts had to determine whether people were black or not o Virginia black if 1 16th o Florida black if 1 8th o People could walk across state lines and their race would o In Maine circuit court Armenians Asiatic Turks were literally change considered white Other Asian races were still not considered white 1922 Takao Ozawa came from Japan went to Cal then moved to Hawaii applied to become naturalized citizen Race shouldn t matter for citizenship only beliefs Supreme Court ruled against citizenship 1920 alien land acts deprived non citizens to own o Courts presented with scientific evidence that Hindus are Disagreed with the science refuted own reasoning in lands Caucasian Thind Ozawa case Claimed that whiteness was subjective South Asians who had naturalized before the court case were stripped of citizenship and possessions Act o prohibited Asian immigration until 1965 During WWII racial tolerance began catching on except for black vs white Federal Housing Act o GI s coming home from WWII needed housing o Some built Quonset Huts but those quickly became slums o New terms of purchasing a home Put down 10 or 20 while bank financed 80 over 30 years Similar to today property o Levittown potato field in NY Built 17 000 homes on the o Suburbia became the new American dream Race played a role in real estate o African Americans were not given these houses because if non white families lived in the neighborhood the property values would go down o Cities were given ratings green good red bad Red Line 8 Mile Detroit white neighbors built a wall separating them from their black neighbors in order to get mortgages approved Blockbusting o Real estate agents would convince whites to sell their houses at a cheaper price because blacks were living in that neighborhood and then sell back to non whites at inflated o Roosevelt NY real estate became depressed housing values went down because whites began leaving given the economic incentive White Flight prices o 03 27 2013 03 27 2013