BiblioVault - Books about Minorities

Becoming New Yorkers

Ethnographies of the New Second Generation

Philip Kasinitz

Russell Sage Foundation, 2004

More than half of New Yorkers under the age of eighteen are the children of immigrants. This second generation shares with previous waves of immigrant youth the experience of attempting to reconcile their cultural heritage with American society. In Becoming New Yorkers, noted social scientists Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters bring together in-depth ethnographies of some of New York's largest immigrant populations to assess the experience of the new second generation and to explore the ways in which they are changing the fabric of American culture. Becoming New Yorkers looks at the experience of specific immigrant groups, with regard to education, jobs, and community life. Exploring immigrant education, Nancy López shows how teachers' low expectations of Dominican males often translate into lower graduation rates for boys than for girls. In the labor market, Dae Young Kim finds that Koreans, young and old alike, believe the second generation should use the opportunities provided by their parents' small business success to pursue less arduous, more rewarding work than their parents. Analyzing civic life, Amy Forester profiles how the high-ranking members of a predominantly black labor union, who came of age fighting for civil rights in the 1960s, adjust to an increasingly large Caribbean membership that sees the leaders not as pioneers but as the old-guard establishment. In a revealing look at how the second-generation views itself, Sherry Ann Butterfield and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida point out that black West Indian and Russian Jewish immigrants often must choose whether to identify themselves alongside those with similar skin color or to differentiate themselves from both native blacks and whites based on their unique heritage. Like many other groups studied here, these two groups experience race as a fluid, situational category that matters in some contexts but is irrelevant in others. As immigrants move out of gateway cities and into the rest of the country, America will increasingly look like the multicultural society vividly described in Becoming New Yorkers. This insightful work paints a vibrant picture of the experience of second generation Americans as they adjust to American society and help to shape its future.

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Being Different

Stories of Utah Minorities

Stanford J. Layton

Signature Books, 2001

Ethnic studies can be full of surprises, pathos, and nostalgia, in Utah as elsewhere. In this anthology, fourteen gifted historians consider such issues as the collision of white settlers and Shoshones in northern Utah and the initial trouble with Salt Lake City residents when all-black troops were garrisoned at Forts Douglas and Duchesne.

The Mormon immigration was primarily of Yankee and British stock. Less advertised is the fact that it also included a sizeable number of Scandinavians who lent a distinctive, Old World flavor to the Sanpete area and by Polynesians who adapted their unique culture to the harsh realities of Skull Valley.

Peoples of other religions and nationalities followed with similarly colorful, energetic cultural contributions: the Italians and Greeks of Carbon and Emery Counties and the first Mexicans in and around Salt Lake City. There were short-lived colonizing efforts by Jewish settlers in central Utah and Japanese in Wasatch County.

In writing about and memorializing significant events surrounding immigrants’ lives and the day-to-day perseverance of pioneers of all nationalities, the fourteen contributors to this anthology offer fascinating details and unforgettable stories.

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Beyond Discrimination

Racial Inequality in a Post-Racist Era

Fredrick C. Harris

Russell Sage Foundation, 2013

Nearly a half century after the civil rights movement, racial inequality remains a defining feature of American life. Along a wide range of social and economic dimensions, African Americans consistently lag behind whites. This troubling divide has persisted even as many of the obvious barriers to equality, such as state-sanctioned segregation and overt racial hostility, have markedly declined. How then can we explain the stubborn persistence of racial inequality? In Beyond Discrimination: Racial Inequality in a Post-Racist Era, a diverse group of scholars provides a more precise understanding of when and how racial inequality can occur without its most common antecedents, prejudice and discrimination. Beyond Discrimination focuses on the often hidden political, economic and historical mechanisms that now sustain the black-white divide in America. The first set of chapters examines the historical legacies that have shaped contemporary race relations. Desmond King reviews the civil rights movement to pinpoint why racial inequality became an especially salient issue in American politics. He argues that while the civil rights protests led the federal government to enforce certain political rights, such as the right to vote, addressing racial inequities in housing, education, and income never became a national priority. The volume then considers the impact of racial attitudes in American society and institutions. Phillip Goff outlines promising new collaborations between police departments and social scientists that will improve the measurement of racial bias in policing. The book finally focuses on the structural processes that perpetuate racial inequality. Devin Fergus discusses an obscure set of tax and insurance policies that, without being overtly racially drawn, penalizes residents of minority neighborhoods and imposes an economic handicap on poor blacks and Latinos. Naa Oyo Kwate shows how apparently neutral and apolitical market forces concentrate fast food and alcohol advertising in minority urban neighborhoods to the detriment of the health of the community. As it addresses the most pressing arenas of racial inequality, from education and employment to criminal justice and health, Beyond Discrimination exposes the unequal consequences of the ordinary workings of American society. It offers promising pathways for future research on the growing complexity of race relations in the United States.

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Blurring the Color Line

The New Chance for a More Integrated America

Richard Alba

Harvard University Press, 2009

Richard Alba argues that the social cleavages that separate Americans into distinct, unequal ethno-racial groups could narrow dramatically in the coming decades. During the mid-twentieth century, the dominant position of the United States in the postwar world economy led to a rapid expansion of education and labor opportunities. As a result of their newfound access to training and jobs, many ethnic and religious outsiders, among them Jews and Italians, finally gained full acceptance as members of the mainstream. Alba proposes that this large-scale assimilation of white ethnics was a result of “non-zero-sum mobility,” which he defines as the social ascent of members of disadvantaged groups that can take place without affecting the life chances of those who are already members of the established majority.

Alba shows that non-zero-sum mobility could play out positively in the future as the baby-boom generation retires, opening up the higher rungs of the labor market. Because of the changing demography of the country, many fewer whites will be coming of age than will be retiring. Hence, the opportunity exists for members of other groups to move up. However, Alba cautions, this demographic shift will only benefit disadvantaged American minorities if they are provided with access to education and training. In Blurring the Color Line, Alba explores a future in which socially mobile minorities could blur stark boundaries and gain much more control over the social expression of racial differences.

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Boston’s Immigrants, 1790–1880

A Study in Acculturation, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, With a New Preface by the Author

Oscar Handlin

Harvard University Press, 1991

As fresh today as when it was first published a half-century ago, Boston’s Immigrants illuminates the history of a particular city and an important phase of the American experience. Focusing on the life of people from the perspective of the social historian, the book explores a wide range of subjects: peasant society and the cause of European migration, population growth and industrial development, the ideology of progress and Catholic thought, and urban politics and the dynamic of prejudice. A generation of students and scholars has profited from its insights, and general readers have enjoyed its lively style. A new Preface by the author reflects upon the book’s intellectual origins.

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Boston’s Immigrants, 1790–1880

A Study in Acculturation, Revised and Enlarged Edition, With a New Preface by the Author

Oscar Handlin

Harvard University Press, 1979

As fresh in 1991 as when it first published a half-century ago, Boston's Immigrants illuminates the history of a particular city and an important phase of the American experience. Focusing on the life of people from the perspective of the social historian, the book explores a wide range of subjects: peasants society and the cause of European migration, population growth and industrial development, the ideology of progress and Catholic thought, and urban politics and the dynamic of prejudice. A generation of students and scholars has profited from its insights, and general readers have enjoyed its lively style. A new preface by the author reflects upon the book's intellectual origins.

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Bridgeport's Socialist New Deal, 1915-36

Cecelia Bucki

University of Illinois Press, 2001

In November 1933, the Socialist Party of Bridgeport, Connecticut put slate roofer Jasper McLevy in the mayor's seat and nearly won control of the city council. Cecelia Bucki explores how labor gained first a foothold and then a stronghold in local politics as broad debates pitted previously unengaged working-class citizens against local business leaders and traditional party elites.

In the heat of the Great Depression, the skilled union craftsmen who made up the bulk of the city's Socialist Party filled a political void created by the crumbling of mainstream parties, the disintegration of traditional modes of ethnic politics, and the city's acute fiscal crisis. In time, however, legislative measures and compromise politics blunted the progressive agenda. The local party split from the Socialist Party of America and became narrowly focused and reformist while still serving as the voice of the working class.

A portrait of a stunning moment in American politics, Bridgeport's Socialist New Deal, 1915-36 offers a fascinating look at the volatility of politics in the early years of the Great Depression.

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