American Families and American History
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Transcript of American Families and American History
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American Families
And
American History
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Pre 1500 1776 Colonial
Years
First American Families:Native American
Tribal TreatiesThe British colonies and, later on, the newly independent country dealt
with the Native tribes as independent nation states via treaties.
The arrangements covered geographical domain and behaviors
accepted by both sides from tribal members and new settlers. Compliance to
treaties was often broken by the need of expansion and unequal military powerbetween the factions
Traditional family practices vary among tribes, more so depending on the extent of contact
with and acculturation to non-tribal communities. Thus the family definition is a partialcomposite of traits found among limited number of families living in reservations and
recorded orally or in few documents.
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Family definition: The family is a group of people who reside together and care for each
others survival through reciprocal defense and economic cooperation (Taylor, p.227)
It is organized along a variety ofstructural patterns of residence, authority, and
marriage: patrilocal, matrilocal, patrilineal, matrilineal, extended, nuclear; combined
gender roles of homemakers, breadwinners, teachers of tribal traditions, religious leaders,and socio-political coordinators. Child rearing practices follows value systems that
emphasize harmony with nature, sharing, equality, cooperation, and respect of
elders and authority, and servitude by leaders.
Consequences of encounter with Europeans: By 1670s the Native population residing in
the territories occupied by the colonies was decimated to one tenth of its original size.
Adults and children were killed by disease, war, and conquest. The family resisted to thepoint that today there are about 2.36 million American Indians i.e. 0.9% of the total
population or 610 000 families (Taylor, p. 227)1. See p. 7 below.
First Immigrant Families:North/Western Europeans
The Alien Act
From Colonial times to early years of the new republic
- Settlers required five years of residence and lawful standing to apply for
citizenship- Immigrants from Northwestern European countries mainly Great Britain,
followed by Germany, Sweden, Ireland and Deutschland. Other
population groups included, African born slaves and their descendants,
and other smaller groups from France, Spain, and non-conquered native
tribes. By definition slaves and Native Americans were not citizens
Family definition: group formed by members related by blood and law with common
residence, caring for each other and in charge of childrearing and social support ofdependents.
See B p: 60 64 for marriage patterns, child rearing practices, and gender roles in the earlysettlement family.
1 Remember that the US Census Bureau uses a definition of the family that many a times obscures the
notion and living arrangement of families among American Indians
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Africans
Indentured Servitude and Slavery Codes
- First arrival recorded in 1619 as voluntary immigrants
- Later, African immigrants came largely involuntarily as indenturedservants initially and later on as slaves.
- By 1660s the Slave Codes regulated trade of slaves and increasingly over
the years imposed strict rules on slaves behaviors.
- Though miscegenation was forbidden, owners retained the power to do as
they pleased with their property, namely to bed slave women.
- Slave owners encouraged marriage and many children in order to
maintain and increase their property yet, the profit-orientation of slavery
decimated these marriages.
Family definition: See B pp: 66- 69 and p. 92 -96
To learn more about Consequences of Slavery for African families in American society:See The Negro Family in the United States by E. Franklin Frazier (1939), University of
Chicago Press; Slavery by Stanley Elkins (1963), University of Chicago Press; The
Negro Family: The Case for National Action by Daniel Moynihan (1965), U.S.Government Printing Office; and, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925
by Herbert Gutman (1976), Pantheon Books
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Population in 1790 USA
48.3%
6.9%5.2%
4.8%
1.8%
2.9%
18.9%
6.6%
2.7%
1.8%
English
German
Unassigned
Scots-Irish
Swedish, French
Irish
African
Scots
Dutch
Native American
US Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Part 2, Series Z 20-132 (Washington, D.C., Governme
Printing Office, 1976)As presented in Diversity in America by Vincent N. Parrillo1996
1800s Westward Expansion
Immigration from Southern and
Eastern Europe
Residence Policies- Immigration from England, Germany and Ireland continue for most of this
century.
- Immigrants from England and Germany and their descendants born in the
United States (Natives) were preferred over the Irish who were treated
badly and perceived problematic because of their Catholicism and
drinking habits.
- The Naturalization Law of 1790 had a color consciousness streak. Itallowed only free, white immigrants to apply for citizenship. Otherwise,
it denied citizenship to Native Americans, Africans, and Asian immigrants.
- Growth in immigration led to the development of the Western USA.
Resettlement of Native Americans (Trail of Tears and establishment of
reservations), annexation of former Northern Mexican territories (Texas,
New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Mountain states) created land
opportunities for new settlers.
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- The construction of the railroad system expanded immigration to other
groups for the first time. Asian immigrants from China, Japan, and Korea
settle in the west to do this work.
- From the last two decades of this century and through the first half of the
1900s, immigrants came from Southern to Eastern Europe. Italians, Greek
and Slavic-origin, and Jewish settlers were now the target of prejudice anddiscrimination. These new ethnic groups were seen not only as different
but as strange and dangerous (Xenophobia).
- The largest waves in the history of immigration occurred during thiscentury. By the 1920s, immigration has dwindled significantly.
Definition of familySize of population
Gender roles
MarriageProperty
Child rearing
Mexican-American Families
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Treaty of Hidalgo
- The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo declared the end of the 1848 Mexican-American War and ceded the currently known Southwestern states of New
Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada as well as Montana and
Texas to the United States
- The resident population of these areas (about 100,000 people) wastransformed into American citizens, at least on paper.
- However, the new laws about land property, labor system, and trades
disrupted the traditional family arrangements and turn them into an
exploited group at the bottom of the social and economic ladder.
- The traditional two-parent married family dramatically decreased due to
the need to find jobs outside the local community. By the late 1800s one
third of family households were headed by females.
- The extended family was a source of support for dealing with migratory
labor and transmitting the Mexican customs and values offamilism
Family definition: Group composed of extended kin, which may include grandparents,
aunts, uncles, married sisters, and brothers and their children, and also compadres andpadrinos (Griswold del Castillo 1984).
See B p: 69 71
Consequences of Annexation for Mexican-American families: The traditions of
Mexican culture that includes Catholic religion, Spanish language, gender-roles
specialization, and patriarchy remained strong despite the loss of status and increasedeconomic competition for jobs from new European settlers and temporary Mexican
workers.
Indian Reservation Families
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Bureau of Indian Affairs (1831)
http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1776833
Since the encounter with Europeans, native families have experienced dramatic changes in
size, composition, and living conditions. Beyond the political domination e.g. Trail of
Tears and creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, American Indian families have
undergone forceful family policies by the federal government aimed to assimilate adultsand children into American society with the consequential result of loss of tribal language
and way of life as experienced in the reservations.
Beginning in 1802, the Trade and Intercourse Act paved the way for federal
involvement in Indian education. From this point forward, the education ofIndians was synonymous with the loss of tribal culture and values (Taylor, op.cit. p: 245)
The record about Native American families is scarce and mostly compares American
Indian families along a continuum from traditional to non-traditional patterns, wheretraditional is defined in terms of linguistic, racial, and cultural Indian values and styles of
living.
See B pp: 64-66
In addition to their current diversity, American Indian families are characterized by anability to adapt, withstand, and endure changing social conditions as evidenced by their
historical survival, tribal organization, and preservation of native culture.
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http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.htmlhttp://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1776833http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.htmlhttp://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1776833 -
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Asian families
Immigration Policies 1840s-1868Chinese Exclusionary Rules 1882-1920
`- With the expansion of the economic power of the United States, China
offered an opportunity for cheap labor power fueled by an unstable local
economy and displaced peasants in search of a livelihood for their families
in a new land.
- The Chinese were the first non-Western immigrant group. Males came as
peons to fill in the agricultural, mining, and railroad construction jobs
while women worked mainly as domestic servants for Whites.
- From their arrival the Chinese were deemed as second-class people with
strange and pagan customs, good only for labor. As the jobs dwindled they
were officially made persona non-grata through a campaign known as
the yellow peril that denied them most civil rights while imposed special
taxes and business limitations to earn a living. As a result, they were
confined to limited geographical areas to live; denied unification with
family left in China; and whenever possible, pressured to return to China.
- New immigrants from China were not allowed. The Chinese ExclusionaryAct of 1882 denied entry of Chinese on the basis of their racial and ethnic
traits.
- The exclusion was originally planned to last 20 years, but it was later
expanded in time and extended to the Japanese and Koreans.
Consequences for Asian families: confinement into areas known as
Chinatowns, limited business opportunities, low fertility rates, strengthening
of Chinese traditions due to bans of intermarriage and women forced toprostitution brought to US
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1868 1964
African-American Families
- African Americans were granted citizenship by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or250 years since their first arrival
- The benefits of Emancipation were eroded by the end of Reconstruction with
the expansion of Jim Crow Laws in traditional Southern states- To escape the hardships of Southern life coupled with those caused by the
Depression, African Americans moved northward
- By 1960, only 60 % of African Americans remained in the South.
-Family definition: The two-parent family was the common pattern after Emancipation up
to the second half of the twentieth century.
Today married couples are the most common type of family structure (52%), followed by
single-parent headed families (46%) (US Bureau of the Census 2000, March 1999)To the degree that Black families differ in family organization with regard to White
families merely reflects their limited access to economic resources, benefits and rewards inAmerican society.
1920s 1950s
National Origin Policy of 1921
- With the decrease in immigration, the national feeling was to seize themoment and create a policy that would foster immigration from
Northwestern Europe and drastically control and even curtail immigration
from elsewhere. The goal was to engineer the social conditions to breed the
best American-born family and consequently, society.
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- The policy formula allowed 3 percent of immigrants from each countrybased on the number of residents in the US who originally migrated from
that country. Consequently, immigrants from Great Britain, Germany,
Ireland, France, and other Northwestern European countries were allowed
entry in much larger numbers than those from countries with more recenthistory of immigration, such as Italy, Greece, or Russia
Pure American families
Families during WWI Depression Years WWII 1950
1960s 2008
Immigration and Naturalization Act 1965
- This policy has several goals: a) reunification of families; b) protection andexpansion of the American economy; c) growth of highly skilled,
specialized, and professional American labor market; and, d) political and
religious asylum to refugees fleeing from Communist countries.
- Country of origin was no longer the determining condition for grantingentry.
- The policy fostered another wave of immigration, though not as large as
the earlier one. It increased the size, diversity, and composition of theAmerican population.
- Due to the preference for highly educated immigrants, the implementation
of the INA has produced a brain drain of qualified individuals who are
much needed in their homeland, yet decide to immigrate to the US.
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Latin American FamiliesSouth/East Asian Families
Middle-Eastern FamiliesAsian Indian Families
Consequences for families
Ethnic diversity of American families
Reform of Immigration and Naturalization
Act of 1986- The original goals of the 1965 INA are not changed. The purpose is to
include a proviso in the policy to deter the flow of illegal immigrants
looking for jobs.
- The reform establishes the showing of documents that legitimate residenceor permit work when applying for jobs in the US, and sets penalties for
employers who hire illegal immigrants.
- Documentation of this sort is needed to request social services in states likeCalifornia and Florida
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