Eastern European and Jewish individuals and groups fled persecution and genocide activity (the systematic killing of an entire people) in their home countries. Such was the case during WWII in which more than 6 million Jews were killed in Europe during the Hitler's Third Reich leading to the Holocaust. Well before World War II, many Eastern Europeans experienced expulsion, as they were pushed out of their homelands, fleeing to other European countries and then the U.S. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe migrated to the U.S., escaping religious persecution at home. Other Eastern Europeans, including Polish immigrants, came to the U.S. as exiles, refugees, or displaced people. As described in Chapter 3.2, more than 1 million Armenians were victims of genocide during World War 1.
Internal Colonialism and Segregation
White ethnic immigrants experienced challenging circumstances in their homeland and upon their migration to the U.S.
Indentured servants from England and Scotland experienced internal colonialism (exploitation by the dominant group), in that they were kept in servitude in the U.S. for 4-7 years in exchange for transport to the colonies.
German immigrants were not victimized to the same degree as many of the other communities of color as many who came to the colonies had more resources than their indentured English and Irish counterparts. Germans were opposed by dominant white groups, particularly during the lead up to World War (and through World War II), sometimes resulting in de facto segregation, physical separation of groups resulting in inequality such as when a small number of German Americans were interned during WWII. Earlier in U.S. history, German immigrants were sometimes not allowed residency in Anglo American neighborhoods.
Irish immigrants, many of whom were very poor, were more of an underclass than the Germans. The English had oppressed the Irish for centuries, eradicating their language and culture and discriminating against their religion (Catholicism). Although the Irish comprised a larger population than the English, they were a subordinate group, lacking political and economic power. This dynamic reached into the new world, where Anglo Americans saw Irish immigrants as a race apart: dirty, lacking ambition, and suitable for only the most menial jobs. In fact, Irish immigrants were subject to criticism identical to that with which the dominant group characterized African Americans resulting in de facto segregation. By necessity, Irish immigrants formed tight communities as they were segregated from their Anglo neighbors.
The later wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was also subject to intense discrimination and prejudice from Anglo and other Euro Americans. In particular, the dominant group—which now included second- and third-generation Germans and Irish—saw Italian immigrants as the dregs of Europe and worried about the purity of the American race (Myers, 2007). Italian immigrants lived in segregated slums known as Little Italy in Northeastern cities, and in some cases were even victims of violence and lynchings as were African Americans in the same time period, discussed in Chapter 7.2. Lynchings against Italian Americans were not widespread, but one of the most vicious attacks occurred in New Orleans in 1891 in which 11 Italians were lynched. In general, Italians worked harder and were paid less than other workers, often doing the dangerous work that other laborers were reluctant to take on.
Consider the video below. Can you relate the story of Sacco and Vanzetti to the experience of minorities and/or immigrants in the U.S. today?
Assimilation and Fusion/Amalgamation
In colonial U.S. history, immigrants from a variety of European countries such as England, Scotland, France, Spain, Germany, and the Scandinavia struggled for dominance, with the dominant group becoming English Americans. Hence, the U.S. society is largely based on the culture, laws, customs, and practices of English Americans. Assimilation, conforming to the norms and values of the dominant culture, is the most typical intergroup consequence applicable to white Americans. This Anglo-conformity model posits that other race-ethic groups should strive to follow the White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) norms in food, dress, language, religion, holidays, and other cultural practices.
While positioned similarly with African Americans in their struggle against Anglo domination during the mid 1800s, over time the Irish ultimately followed the assimilation model. In Noel Ignatiev's study of Irish immigrants in the 19th-century United States, How the Irish Became white, he posited that the Irish triumph over nativist efforts, thus their assimilation, marked the incorporation of the Irish into the dominant group of American society: white. Ignatiev claimed that the Irish gained acceptance as white when they supported slavery and violence against free African Americans. Only through their own violence against free Blacks and support of slavery did the Irish gain acceptance as white and thus admission into jobs, neighborhoods, and schools. One might say the Irish exchanged their greenness for whiteness, and thus collaborated against Blackness.
Pluralism
Glimpses of pluralism, mutual respect for and coexistence of a variety of cultures, may today be understood by the presence of white ethnic enclaves. (Ethnic enclaves were defined in Chapter 1.3). Earlier Euro American immigrant groups who settled into ethnic enclaves or communities in the 19th and 20th centuries did so as a result of segregation they experienced upon their migration to the U.S. However, to be considered pluralist, these ethnic enclaves must be free of discrimination which was clearly not always the case in previous centuries. The following all include examples of white ethnic enclaves: The Little Italys in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia; the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn New York which is home to nearly 100,000 Lubavitsch-sect, ultra-Orthodox Jews; the Amish and other Old Order religious groups of Iowa, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and far Northwestern Minnesota are all primary exemplars of ethnic enclaves.
Little Armenia (Armenian: Փոքր Հայաստան) is a neighborhood in central Los Angeles, California. It is named after the Armenians who came from Asia Minor and made their way to Los Angeles during the early part of the 20th century, escaping the Armenian genocide, as described in Chapter 3.2. Los Angeles has the second largest Armenian diaspora community in the world, after Moscow, Russia.
These white ethnic groups formed neighborhoods where first, second, and third generation white ethnics lived and worked together in ethnic enclaves. By 1920, New York City became a major destination for Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who fled religious persecution and anti-Semitism, intense prejudice and racism against Jews (discussed further in Chapter 10.2). These Jewish immigrants performed both skilled and unskilled labor. These Jewish immigrants created dense networks of commercial, financial, and social cooperation (Healey, 2014). These enclaves provided access to cultural resources included jobs, foodways, cultural traditions, holidays, and ethnic pride. Another examples of pluralism can be understood with the Amish population. This traditional, religious group is committed to a way of life organized around farming with an absence of technology in their lives.
