Normativity and Racism in the United States

Despite the United States being a multicultural nation of immigrants, white normativity was and is still a dominating force against many different races and ethnicities. Since the time that White Anglo Saxon peoples have come to North America, any other ethnicity has had to face some form of oppression under the White Anglo Saxon America. The United States has had many different waves of racism to different races and ethnicities, starting with the colonization and manifest destiny of the Native Americans and Mexicans, the United States had a mindset of keeping America a White Anglo Saxon country. This is again apparent when Asians started to immigrate to America starting with the Chinese and moving on to the Japanese, both discriminated against heavily. While these different ethnic groups may have faced different and some similar types of oppression, they have all went through some time of oppression pushing for the manifest destiny of a White Anglo Saxon America.

Although America was not originally inhabited by White Anglo Saxon people from Europe, that will soon be the case through the American mindset of Manifest Destiny, a term first coined famously in 1845 by a New York newspaper editor John O'Sullivan,

"The American claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative self-government entrusted to us. It is a right such as that of the tree to the space of air and earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth" (Spickard 131).

With the mindset that White America was noble enough to seize land from the peoples of other ethnic backgrounds, specifically indigenous people, starts America's long wave of racism and oppression.

Native Americans were the first to inhabit North America, not the whites. Unfortunately for the Native Americans, their lands would soon be taken over by the White Anglo Saxon America, and their people sent off to reservations. Starting with the colonization of the original thirteen colonies, the Native Americans that had already been living in the lands that were colonized by the pilgrims of England were wiped out after the American Revolution. Thus began the White Anglo Saxon mindset of manifest destiny, including questions such as "What shall be the geographical limits of our nation?" which had a true meaning of "Where shall we go and what shall we take?" (Spickard 130). After the formal acquirement of the lands between the east coast and the Appalachian Mountains from England, White Angelo Saxon American wanted to expand further. Despite the fact that Native Americans, not the French, inhabited the lands that consist of the Louisiana Purchase, Early America purchased the lands from the French; the Native Americans had no say whatsoever, in the transfer of their own lands. The results of this purchase either attempted to assimilate the Native Americans or drive them away from their homelands and towards the west.

The Native Americans that were not forcibly removed were instead assimilated into White Anglo Saxon culture. Tribes such as the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and the Seminole were considered "civilized tribes" by White Anglo Saxon America because of their ability to assimilate into White culture. These tribes with the exception of the Seminoles responded positively to President Thomas Jefferson and his assimilation policies. Such policies include settling down and practicing agriculture, herding their livestock and horses, and fencing off their lands; some even participated in the slave trade with the rest of America. The children in these tribes attended White Anglo Saxon missionary schools and were made to be just like white people with the help of white people. The most notable tribe that assimilated was the Cherokee, who wrote their own constitution in 1827, and published their first newspapers the year after.

Unfortunately, assimilation was not always enough; white people also wanted the rich lands that the assimilating Native Americans inhabited. President Andrew Jackson pushed for Native Americans to migrate westward, encouraging harass of the tribes by publicly refusing to honor treaty obligations to protect the tribes from trespass and attacks by Whites. In 1830, Congress passed and Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, empowering the President to take Indian lands in the vicinity of White population and exchanging them for lands west of the Mississippi river, promising "the United States will forever secure and guaranty to them, and their heirs" (Spickard 134). The Indian Removal Act proved to be disastrous to Native Americans. The Choctaw were the first to be removed, first packed into stockades by federal troops and then marched northwest, away from their homelands. Despite the hardships of the march such as encountering a blizzard, thirteen thousand Choctaw reached their new home in the Red River District, the remaining seven thousand Choctaw successfully assimilated into White culture; there is no trace of Choctaw culture or identity left in their original lands. The Chickasaw also experienced a fairly successful, well funded migration away from their homelands where they did not experience much tragedy, arriving at their new home with their numbers almost unchanged. The Seminole were the last to be forcibly removed, although several hundred stayed behind in Florida to assimilate into White Anglo Saxon society. The Cherokee and Creeks however, found their migrations much harsher and filled with tragedy. In addition to a steam boat tragedy taking three hundred and eleven lives, the Creeks lost nearly half of their population either during their migration or their first year living away from their original homes. The Cherokee, the most powerful of these tribes, were raided by surprise by in their villages and farmsteads by federal troops and herded into stockades to begin their migration west. Out of the original sixteen thousand Cherokee, one fourth of them perished during the winter migration, the rest either escaped into North Carolina or were dumped into an Indian reservation territory.

Although Anglo Saxon America may have promised the lands west of the Mississippi in the Indian Removal Act, that promise was not upheld for long. As Whites continued to expand west, they had to move the Native Americans off of their lands, thus resulted in the deaths of over thirty thousand Plains Native Americans in the trail of tears. As Whites expanded to the Pacific coast, their policy of relocating Native Americans changed to simply exterminating Native Americans. Modoc Indians were slaughtered by whites until they finally signed a peace treaty with the United States government and promptly sent to a Native American reservation.

Native American reservations consist of harsh conditions. Sickness such as malaria, pneumonia, rheumatic fever, measles, and venereal diseases were rampant through Native American reservations. Native American children were sent off to White Anglo Saxon boarding schools to be assimilated into white culture, eliminating Native American culture and identity. Although resistance did form in the oppressive reservations across different Native American tribes, a true movement of resistance never occurred because tribal allegiance was too strong in the communities. (Spickard 143)

Four years after United States citizenship was granted to the Native Americans, the Merriam Report showed the true conditions of Native American reservations. Native Americans could not make a living like they used to, but survived through the poverty, disease, and high death rates which were caused by living in a substandard condition. The government tried to help Native Americans in 1934, passing the Indian Reorganization Act which allowed for tribal governments to play a larger role in the reservations and introduced agricultural and vocational programs into the Native American reservations. Unfortunately, in 1954, due to the sentiments of White Americans, the Indian Reorganization Act was halted on beliefs that Native Americans should assimilate into American culture, living individual lives and without tribal affiliations. Native Americans were encouraged to assimilate into urban cities, some were successful with government help, but many did not successfully assimilate. (Spickard 311-313)

Mexicans, like Native Americans, also suffered from manifest destiny. Many Mexicans originally occupied lands in Texas, Southern California, and New Mexico. Originally under Spanish rule, Mexico did not allow trade with outsiders and had a racial class system putting light skinned Europeans on top, Native Americans and Mexican mixes as a second class, and Blacks and pure Native Americans on the bottom of the social ladder. When Mexico declared independence from Spain in1821, the government was much different, encouraging White Americans to immigrate to Mexico in hopes of creating a primarily White European society in Mexico. To encourage White Americans, Mexico gave out land grants but required White Americans to become Mexican citizens, Roman Catholic, work the lands, obey the law, and act as a buffer from the Native Americans.

Unfortunately for Mexico, this plan backfired. Americans moved into Mexican territory by the thousands and disregarded all the requirements that came with the land grants. Many settlers also brought slaves with them and slavery is illegal in the Mexican government. The Mexican government attempted to close all immigration into their lands in the 1830s but was too late. By 1836, the number of Americans outnumbered Mexicans thirty-five thousand to eighteen thousand and they demanded independence from Mexico and annexation by the United States. The new Republic of Texas was formed when Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana's army fell on April 21, 1836 in San Jacinto, Texas. Although the new Republic of Texas had some trouble becoming a state of the United States because of the issue of the balance of slavery, it was admitted into the United States in 1846. (Spickard 145-146) The taking of Texas was an act of war to Mexico and thus started the Mexican War. In 1846, New Mexico was taken by the United States and California was also claimed a year later in 1847 and the Mexican war soon ended on February 2, 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The end result was Mexico's loss of half of its land area to the United States. The United States was soon completed with the Gadsden Purchase which brought southern Arizona into the United States. The United States then argued in congress about how much of Mexico should be further taken. Some extremists advocating conquering the rest of Mexico, while others had no interest in annexing any more Mexican territory because of the implication of having Mexicans assimilate into White Anglo Saxon society.

A side effect of the United States conquering of Mexican territory was the issue of what to do with the Mexican population that was already in the new United States territory. John Calhoun of South Carolina was quoted saying:

"I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our union any but the Caucasian race-the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes." (Spickard 148)

Many whites believed that Mexicans, despite their ethnic background, were unfit to be assimilated into White Anglo Saxon society. Mexicans were thought of as almost an entirely different race. Despite these doubts however, a majority of upper class Mexicans were of Spanish- European descent and considered to have a good level of "Whiteness", enabling Mexicans to be granted United States citizenship. Many more White Americans migrated west to California during the Gold Rush, taking over the primarily Mexican population and turning it into a White American population. Mexicans were now seen as foreigners in their own lands, and were even charged a miner's tax of twenty dollars per month to be able to mine for gold in the Californian mines if you were not white because white settlers did not like the thought of having their gold taken by other ethnicities.

Years later, Mexican immigrants, citizens and Hispanics were still oppressed. Even if a Mexican was born in America, he or she was still treated in the same manner as a Mexican immigrant. Mexicans took the low paying harsher jobs that Americans did not want and lived in a weaker economic life. Labor unions also frowned upon Mexicans and thus working conditions and pay never lifted up for Mexicans. In addition to the segregation of schools, Mexican communities were also set in different areas away from Whites in hostile lands, securing the economic divide of the Whites and Mexicans. Mexicans always worked for lower wages and harsher conditions, but were still accused by whites to be taking all of the employment.

During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of foreigners to raise the chances of United States citizens to be employed; this was known as the repatriation program. While possibly an effective strategy in theory, the government could not tell apart foreign Mexican immigrants, and American born Mexican citizens, leading to the deportation of many Mexican American citizens. Emilia Castaneda is a prime example of these deportation mistakes. Castaneda was a United States citizen and did not even know how to speak Spanish, yet she was deported to Mexico where she had to learn Spanish to survive. Though Castaneda eventually returned to the United States to work during World War II, she is one of nearly half a million Mexican immigrants and Mexican American citizens who were forcibly deported during the repatriation program. (Spickard 300-302)

Today, many peoples of Mexican ethnicity, whether citizen or immigrant, are still oppressed by the White Anglo Saxon society of America. Illegal immigration is still a big political issue and many Mexican immigrants are deported every day. Though some may think that the deportation of illegal immigrants may be in the best interest of the United States, there are many cases where hardworking Mexican immigrants are deported or discriminated against based solely on their backgrounds. A prime example is a woman who worked hard at her inner-city high school and graduated first in her class, winning a scholarship to an Ivy League college but could not attend because she could not apply for a loan due to her lack of American citizenship. There are also tragic cases where a father of a family may be sent back to Mexico while his family is still in America, unable to survive without income (Spickard 435). Many illegal immigrants cannot apply for jobs or housing, and have to live on ridiculously low wages, and there are enforcements by giving consequences to businesses that hire or rent to a person without United States citizenship.

Another racial group that was oppressed and exploited are the Asians, specifically the Chinese and Japanese. Over two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese, primarily men, immigrated to the United States during the gold rush to mine gold. Like people of Mexican descent, the Chinese miners were also levied the twenty dollar per month mining fee to mine the gold mines. None of the Chinese immigrants were eligible for citizenship based solely on the fact that they were not white. Chinese men were often considered feminine and ridiculed because of the feminine stereotype. Since the California gold rush was primarily a male society, many jobs that would traditionally be considered to be feminine jobs such as cooking and laundry were left up for grabs and the Chinese men took on those employment opportunities despite the ridicule of feminization by the Whites. When the Chinese found that the gold frontier was lacking, thousands went to help build the Transcontinental Railroads for less pay and harsher conditions. Also like people of Mexican ethnicity, when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, White people accused the Chinese of taking all of the jobs and driving down wages, starting the anti Chinese movement where many anti Chinese laws were passed and anti Chinese riots occurred. The Chinese exclusion act was the first law to ever target a specific ethnicity and prevented anymore Chinese immigration with the exceptions of students, merchants, and travelers. The Chinese, along with other non whites, were also not allowed to testify against a white person in court, as was apparent in the case of the murder of Ling Sing in the Nevada country. Three Chinese and one white testified against Ling Sing's murderers but was ruled that "No black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be permitted to give evidence in favor of, or against, any white person" (Spickard 161), this was justified by Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray who said that White Americans would "Soon see them at the polls, in the jury box, upon the bench, and in our legislative halls" (Spickard 161) if given the right to testify in court. Chinese Americans are still stereotyped against. A scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Wen Ho Lee, was accused of giving secrets to Chinese scientists because of his ethnic background. The New York Times suggested that Lee was likely a spy and he was thus fired from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Spickard 424-425)

Along with the Chinese, Japanese Americans were also discriminated against, most noticeably during World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 lead to the deportation of over one hundred and ten thousand Japanese Americans to concentration camps in barren lands based solely on their ethnic backgrounds. The Japanese community took years to recover from the internment camps. Japanese owned farms and shops could not be run and had to be sold off for prices far below market price to Whites, and losing time in the internment camps. There was not much resistance to Executive Order 9066. Realizing the horrendous act of Executive Order 9066, Japanese Americans finally received monetary reparations in the 1980's. (Spickard 317-322)

Because of white normativity and the mindset of manifest destiny, many different races and ethnicities have been subjugated to oppression by the White Anglo Saxon America. Although the oppression and discrimination may be different, such as forced removal from homes, lower wages and harsher working conditions, or just simple discrimination and hate, all non white ethnicities have faced some sort of hardship in America. The cultural identities of peoples of different ethnic backgrounds are slowly being closed away as a white normative society shuns upon any other cultures other than the White Anglo Saxon Culture. While America may be called a multicultural land for immigrants, being non white in America is not an easy task, as shown in the examples of being Native American, Hispanic, or Asian.

Works Cited

Spickard, Paul. Almost All Aliens. New York: Taylor and Frances Group LLC, 2007.