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kemetic-dreams · 8 months

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The Invention of Hispanics: What It Says About the Politics of Race

America’s surging politics of victimhood and identitarian division did not emerge organically or inevitably, as many believe. Nor are these practices the result of irrepressible demands by minorities for recognition, or for redress of past wrongs, as we are constantly told. Those explanations are myths, spread by the activists, intellectuals, and philanthropists who set out deliberately, beginning at mid-century, to redefine our country. Their goal was mass mobilization for political ends, and one of their earliest targets was the Mexican-American community.

These activists strived purposefully to turn Americans of this community (who mostly resided in the Southwestern states) against their countrymen, teaching them first to see themselves as a racial minority and then to think of themselves as the core of a pan-ethnic victim group of “Hispanics”—a fabricated term with no basis in ethnicity, culture, or race.

This transformation took effort—because many Mexican Americans had traditionally seen themselves as white. When the 1930 Census classified “Mexican American” as a race, leaders of the community protested vehemently and had the classification changed back to white in the very next census. The most prominent Mexican-American organization at the time—the patriotic, pro-assimilationist League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—complained that declassifying Mexicans as white had been an attempt to “discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.”

Tracing their ancestry in part to the Spanish who conquered South and Central America, they regarded themselves as offshoots of white Europeans.

Such views may surprise readers today, but this was the way many Mexican Americans saw their race until mid-century. They had the law on their side: a federal district court ruled in In Re Ricardo Rodríguez (1896) that Mexican Americans were to be considered white for the purposes of citizenship concerns. And so as late as 1947, the judge in another federal case (Mendez v. Westminster) ruled that segregating Mexican-American students in remedial schools in Orange County was unconstitutional because it represented social disadvantage, not racial discrimination.

At that time Mexican Americans were as white before the law as they were in their own estimation.

The process would only work if Mexican Americans “accepted a disadvantaged minority status,” as sociologist G. Cristina Mora of U.C. Berkeley put it in her study, Making Hispanics (2014). But Mexican Americans themselves left no doubt that they did not feel like members of a collectively oppressed minority at all. As Skerry noted, “[the] race idea is somewhat at odds with the experience of Mexican Americans, over half of whom designate themselves racially as white.” Even in the early 1970s, according to Mora, many Mexican-American leaders retained the view that “persons of Latin American descent were quite diverse and would eventually assimilate and identify as white.” And yet “Spanish/Hispanic/Latino” is now a well-established ethnic category in the U.S. Census, and many who select it have been taught to see themselves as a victmized underclass. How did this happen?

In other words, a distinctive set of beliefs, customs, and habits supported the American political system. If the Cajun, the Dutch, the Spanish—and the Mexicans—were to be allowed into the councils of government, they would have to adopt these mores and abandon some of their own. It is hard to argue that this formula has failed. Writing in 2004, political scientist Samuel Huntington reminded us that

“Millions of immigrants and their children achieved wealth, power, and status in American society precisely because they assimilated themselves into the prevailing culture.”

Indeed, merely calling Mexican-Americans a ‘minority’ and implying that the population is the victim of prejudice and discrimination has caused irritation among many who prefer to believe themselves indistinguishable [from] white Americans…. [T]here are light-skinned Mexican-Americans who have never experienced the faintest…discrimination in public facilities, and many with ambiguous surnames have also escaped the experiences of the more conspicuous members of the group.”

Even worse, there was also “the inescapable fact that…even comparatively dark-skinned Mexicans…could get service even in the most discriminatory parts of Texas,” according to the report. These experiences, so different from those of Africans in the South or even parts of the North, had produced

a long and bitter controversy among middle-class Mexican Americans about defining the ethnic group as disadvantaged by any other criterion than individual failures. The recurring evidence that well-groomed and well-spoken Mexican Americans can receive normal treatment has continuously undermined either group or individual definition of the situation as one entailing discrimination.

It is incumbent on us to pause and note exactly what these UCLA researchers were bemoaning. Their own survey was revealing that Mexican-Americans’ lived experiences did not square with their being passive victims of invidious, structural discrimination, much less racial animus. They owned their own failures, which—their experience told them—were remediable through individual conduct, not mass mobilization. Their touchstones were individualism, personal responsibility, family, solidarity, and independence—all cherished by most Americans at the time, but anathema to the activists.

The study openly admitted that reclassification as a collective entity serves the “purposes of enabling one to see the group’s problems in the perspective of the problems of other groups.” The aim was to show “that Mexican Americans share with Negroes the disadvantages of poverty, economic insecurity and discrimination.” The same thing, however, could have been said in the late 1960s of the Scots-Irish in Appalachia or Italian Americans in the Bronx. But these experiences were not on the same level as the crushing and legal discrimination that African Americans had faced on a daily basis. That is why the survey respondents emphasized “the distinctiveness of Mexican Americans” from Africans and “the difference in the problems faced by the two groups.” The UCLA researchers came out pessimistic: Mexican Americans were “not yet easy to merge with the other large minorities in political coalition.”

Thereafter, militants from La Raza, MALDEF, and other organizations put pressure on the Census Bureau to create a Hispanic identity for the 1980 Census—in order, as Mora puts it, “to persuade them to classify ‘Hispanics’ as distinct from whites.”

The Hispanic category was a Frankenstein’s monster, an amalgam of disparate ethnic groups with precious little in common.

The 1970 Census had included an option to indicate that the respondent was “Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, [or] Other Spanish.” But re-categorizing Mexican Americans and lumping them in with other residents of Latin American descent under a “Hispanic American” umbrella was a necessary move, Mora writes, because “this would best convey their national minority group status.”

The law states that “a large number of Americans of Spanish origin or descent suffer from racial, social, economic, and political discrimination and are denied the basic opportunities that they deserve as American citizens.” The very thing that defined Hispanics was victimhood.

IT IS SHOWN THAT THE HUMAN CATEGORY "WHITE" WAS BUILT UPON THE IDEA OF THAT BRITISH AS WHITE, CHRISTIAN, OF THEIR ESSENCE FREE,AND DESERVING OF RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES FROM WHICH THOSE INSUFFICIENTLY BRITISH -LIKE COULD BE DENIED. JACQUELINE BATTALORA "BIRTH OF A WHITE NATION.

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lilithism1848 · 7 months

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Atrocities US committed against ASIANS

Between 1956-65, the Chinese Confession Program sought confessions of illegal entry from US citizens and residents of Chinese origin, with the (misleading) offer of legalization of status in exchange. The program resulted in 13,895 confessions, with about 10,000 in the San Francisco region (where the bulk of the illegally entering Chinese population was concentrated. This was far less than the number of people suspected of having entered illegally, and the less than complete usage of the program was attributed to lack of trust in the United States immigration enforcement agencies among the Chinese population, the lack of clear benefits from confessing, and the risk of deportation faced by the confessor as well as his or her (blood and paper) family. Since confessions by neighbors could implicate a person and cause him or her to be deported, the program created fear and distrust in many Chinese-American communities. Anybody who had illegally entered and came in contact with the FBI before he or she had confessed was subject to immediate deportation. The confessions had a significant impact on the Chinese-American community: as a result of the confessions, 22,083 people were exposed and 11,294 paper son slots were closed. For comparison, the 1950 Census listed 117,629 Chinese in America (excluding Hawaii).

From 1942-46, FDR imprisoned ~120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps after the attack on pearl harbor. The conditions of the camps were notoriously horrible, and most were forced to make “loyalty oaths”, or risk deportation and separation from their families. It was later admitted that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. Most lost their homes and jobs, as whites took over vacated homes.

The repression faced by Chinese Americans in the 19th and 20th century are found in the articles, History of Chinese Americans, and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the US.

The Immigration Act of 1917 imposed literacy tests on immigrants, and created new categories of inadmissible persons and barred immigration from the Asia-Pacific Zone.

The Scott Act of 1888 was a law that prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning. It left an estimated 20,000-30,000 Chinese outside the United States at the time stranded.

In 1882, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, illegalizing Chinese immigration, in a long chain of anti-chinese legislation. It was repealed in 1943.

The San Francisco Riot of 1877 was a two-day pogrom waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, California by the city’s majority white population from the evening of July 23 through the night of July 24, 1877. The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city’s Chinese immigrant population.

The Page Act of 1875 prohibited entry of immigrants considered undesirable, classifying that as any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a forced laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. It was introduced to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women”. The Page Act was supposed to strengthen the ban against “coolie” laborers, by imposing a fine of up to $2,000 and maximum jail sentence of one year upon anyone who tried to bring a person from China, Japan,or any Asian country to the United States “without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service”. However, these provisions, as well as those regarding convicts “had little effect at the time”. On the other hand, the ban on female Asian immigrants was heavily enforced and proved to be a barrier for all Asian women trying to immigrate, especially Chinese.

The Chinese Massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot which occurred on October 24, 1871 in Los Angeles, California, when a mob of around 500 white men entered Chinatown to attack, rob, and murder Chinese residents of the city. An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were systematically tortured and then hanged by the mob, making the event the largest mass lynching in American history.

The Pigtail Ordinance was a racist law passed in 1873 intended to force prisoners in San Francisco, California to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. It affected Han Chinese prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their queue, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off.

The Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 was passed by the California legislature in an attempt to appease rising anger among white laborers about salary competition created by the influx of Chinese immigrants at the height of the California gold rush.The act sought to protect white laborers by imposing a monthly tax on Chinese immigrants seeking to do business in the state of California.

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haggishlyhagging · 3 months

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The gap in male/female literacy [in the United States] diminished in a pattern affected by region, class and race. By 1840, when common schools offered the same hours of instruction to boys and girls, almost all white women in the Northeast could read and write. This level of literacy was not attained by Southern white women until the end of the 19th century. Rural women, immigrants and African-American women were illiterate longer than native-born, white and middle-class women. But no matter what particular group of person one studies and in what particular location, the literacy gap between men and women of the same group is not closed until nearly universal literacy is reached.

A similar observation can be made by studying levels of educational achievement in various groups and classes of the population. For example, until 1837 women were unable to enroll in any college or university. By 1870, they constituted 21 percent of the total undergraduate enrollment; by 1880, women constituted 32 percent of the undergraduate student body and by 1910 almost 40 percent. While the increase in the number of college-educated women is notable, it is more significant that it was not until 1920, when women were 47 percent of the college undergraduates, that women achieved equal access to college educations with men. Yet by the end of the 1930s, while the number of female college-trained undergraduates rose slightly, the number of women trained to the professional level declined dramatically. The low point in the 20th century came in 1960, when women were 35 percent of all students with a B.A. or first professional degree, and only 10 percent of all doctorates.

It is only since the 1920s that equal educational access for women has been won on all levels up to graduate school, yet vestiges of former educational deprivation continue to show up in women's lower achievement on college-level tests and in the awarding of scholarships. More important, no matter what the variation for a particular group to be considered (ethnicity, age, region, religion), what remains unvaryingly true is that women's access to education remains below that of males of their group. The single exception to this rule is the case of African-American women, who between 1890 and 1970 exceed males of their race in educational attainment. This is due to the vagaries of race discrimination, which offered little incentive for higher education for men, since even with advanced degrees they were confined to menial jobs. On the other hand, educated black women had a chance to escape domestic and menial service. Thus families had an incentive to foster the education of their daughters rather than of their sons. In this respect African-American families form an exception to the almost universal American pattern whereby families educationally deprive daughters for the sake of sons.

Thus, although educational access was won much later for all African-Americans than it was for whites, in 1960 the census shows that black female physicians represented nearly 10 percent of all black physicians, while white female physicians were 6 percent of all white physicians. Black women lawyers were 9 percent of all black lawyers, while white women lawyers were only 3 percent of all white lawyers. Similar patterns appear in the census data for schoolteachers. Ironically, one of the few gains of the 20th century civil rights movement which has remained in place is that the educational advantage of black men over black women now follows similar sexist patterns as that of white men over white women.

The pattern of women's struggle for equality of access to education in America is the same as it was in Europe: each level of institutionalized learning had to be separately and consecutively conquered. Resistance by individual men and by male-controlled establishments was relentless and unwavering. At every level of the educational establishment women had to first fight for the right to learn, then for the right to teach and finally for the right to affect the content of learning. The last has yet to be accomplished to any significant extent.

-Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

#gerda Lerner #us history #women’s history #female education #female oppression #amerika #woc

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ukrfeminism · 11 months

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5 minute read

On 1st May this year, Johanita Dogbey, a 31-year-old Ghanaian British woman, was killed in broad daylight in Brixton, London. The man accused of attacking her, Mohamed Nur, a 33-year-old Somali British man, is currently in police custody and awaiting trial. Her death adds to a long list of Black women who have been found dead due to or under the suspicion of foul play in recent years: Darrell Buchanan, Blessing Olusegun and Valerie Forde, to name a few. With growing discourse surrounding the prevalence of Black femicide in the United States, following shocking revelations like the fact that Black women are four times as likely as white or Hispanic women to die a violent death, it’s time Britain recognised its own epidemic. On the surface, the data indicate no apparent racial disparities but a deeper look into the context of how these figures are produced points to a more complex and even dangerous reality for Black women in the UK.

Understanding Black femicide

The World Health Organization (WHO) generally defines femicide as the “intentional murder of women and girls because they are women” but allows for broader definitions encompassing any killings of women and girls. The vast majority of women’s murderers are men, with ‘intimate femicide’ (i.e. intimate partner violence) being the most typical form. Worldwide, over 35% of all women’s murders are reported to have been committed by a former or current husband or boyfriend. Conversely, just 5% of male homicides are committed by a current or former intimate partner (this includes gay and bisexual men). Other common types of femicide comprise honour killings (occurring mainly in the Middle East, South Asia and their respective diasporas), dowry deaths (most prevalent in India) and non-intimate femicide — often with a sexual motivation. Accordingly, Black femicide can be understood as the intentional killing of Black women and girls on the basis of their race, gender or both; it can also include any Black female homicide victims.

Looking at the global stats, we can see that in the US, Black women’s risk of homicide rivals that of Black men, with one dying on average every six hours in 2020. In South Africa, an average of nine women are killed every day, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world to live as a woman, particularly a Black woman. Predominantly Black Caribbean countries Antigua & Barbuda and Jamaica have the second and third highest femicide rates in the world, respectively, with El Salvador topping the list.

I n the UK, we know that a woman is killed on average every three days but the frequency of said violence happening to Black women is unclear, given a dearth of intersectional reporting on the issue. For example, the 2020 Femicide Census, an archive of the “women who have been killed by men in the UK and the men who have killed them”, records the ethnicity of just 22 out of 110 victims. Of this figure, 16 were white and six were Asian. Without further context, the takeaway here would be that no Black women (or at least a much smaller proportion) were killed by men within this dataset, which could then be extrapolated to apply to Britain’s population as a whole. When speaking about this to a representative of nia, the anti-violence against women and girls (VAWG) charity that oversees The Femicide Census, they acknowledged this is a problematic conclusion: “The lack of meaningful, verified (i.e. official public record material) data on ethnicity is an ongoing problem. Data on race and ethnicity is drawn from police responses to Freedom of Information requests (FoIs). Ethnicity was provided in only one-fifth of police FoIs, and even then, the terms used are inconsistent, arbitrary, sometimes meaningless, archaic or downright offensive, for example, ‘Dark European’ or ‘Oriental’.”

‘Global majority’ is used as a collective term to describe those racialised as non-white, who make up approximately 85% of the world’s population. Anecdotal evidence and interpersonal experiences from anti-VAWG service providers and service users alike suggest femicide disproportionately impacts global majority women in the UK, including Black women, according to nia. However, without more precise figures to back up these ideas, the ability to identify culture-specific risk factors, barriers to access and best methods of providing support is limited. “Without such data, there will be no evidence base for the need for specialist by and for organisations, additional targeted resources and overhauling practice and policy which may reflect racist and sexist attitudes or institutional racism and sexism,” nia concludes.

Inter-community issues present overlooked risk factors

Like other forms of violence against socially minoritised people, the line between what is and what isn’t an act of discrimination is often ambiguous. Dogbey’s death, for instance, has been framed as a completely “random attack” by media reports. Perhaps it simply was a case of wrong place, wrong time; perhaps not. Latoya Dennis, the founder of Black Femicide UK, thinks not, believing Dogbey’s killing to have been influenced by an underground culture of online inceldom and inter-community tensions between Somali and non-Somali Black groups. “I think there’s a strong incel community and I believe that a lot of Somali men are a part of that, from what I’ve seen online. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man who killed Johanita was a part of that community,” she tells us. Nur is reported to have (non-fatally) assaulted two other women and a man on 29th April, showing a gender bias in his crimes. When asked to expand, Dennis references hostile online encounters with Somali men on her platform after profiling the story of a Somali Bolt driver allegedly attempting to abduct a young, non-Somali Black woman. “That was the most backlash I’ve received through my work. I received a lot of threats and harassment, and I was also doxxed,” she explains.

Sistah space

W hether or not this sentiment is correct, it highlights a valid sense of intra-racial rift within Black Britain that the media and institutions alike fail to interrogate in depth, leaving Black women at risk. Unbothered Editor L’Oréal Blackett speaks to an overreliance on the UK’s few Black journalists to cover Black stories as a partial factor in these gaps in mainstream coverage: “When I’ve worked at major publications, these kinds of stories are looked at as an inter-community issue. There’s a sense of ‘we can’t touch that’ within these white (and male)-dominated newsrooms.” She continues: “UK media is relying on a handful of Black journalists to cover everything that goes on in our communities.”

Sistah Space, a domestic violence charity advocating and campaigning for Black and mixed-race British women of African and Caribbean descent, also cites racial and cultural prejudices as major reasons why Black British women’s deaths don’t receive as much attention as the deaths of white British women: “The media categorically does not give Black women and domestic abuse enough attention. For example, media coverage of the Sarah Everard case was on every news source for a period of time. Can you name any Black women who have had the same amount of coverage or outcry?”

It’s not just the media at fault here. As detailed above, there is an oversight when it comes to the interrogation and provision of race and ethnicity-specific insights from the government and police that potentially reflects apathetic and even racist (and sexist) attitudes towards female global majority concerns in this country. In March 2014, Valerie Forde, 45, and her 22-month-old baby were brutally murdered by Valerie’s ex-partner after her cries for help had been either downplayed or ignored by the authorities, exemplifying such failings. Six weeks prior to her death, Forde had told police that the then 53-year-old Roland McKoy had threatened to burn down her house with her and her baby inside. Instead of Forde’s warning being recorded as a threat to life, which would have required much closer monitoring, it was deemed a threat to property — a serious but far less urgent risk. Furthermore, BBC News reports that a civilian call handler failed to fully record and communicate critical information in the 999 call from one of Forde’s daughters on the day of the crime. Were it not for the “inaction” of authorities, Forde may have been alive today.

Sistah Space believes this to be the case and is advocating for Valerie’s Law, a proposal which would implement “mandatory cultural competency training that accounts for the cultural nuances and barriers, colloquialisms, languages and customs that make up the diverse Black community”. In 2021, the organisation launched a video campaign to illustrate the unequal treatment of Black and white female domestic abuse victims by law enforcement. Research conducted by Sistah Space reveals that in the UK, 86% of women of African and/or Caribbean heritage have either been a victim of domestic abuse or know a family member who has been assaulted. Only 57% of victims, however, said they would report the abuse to the police, likely due to a historic lack of confidence in law enforcement among Black Britons. Meanwhile, March 2020 to June 2021 figures from Refuge, the country’s largest specialist domestic abuse organisation, show that Black women were 14% less likely than white survivors of domestic abuse to be referred to Refuge for support.

Implementing meaningful change

The man accused of killing Johanita Dogbey will not be standing trial until 29th April 2024, joining tens of thousands of backlogged cases in London alone that will not be fully reviewed for an average of over a year. With Dogbey’s story falling out of the mainstream news cycle just over a week after her death, it’s hard to imagine a society where Black femicide is given the consideration it deserves. As things stand, we rely on specialist media platforms like Unbothered to do the work in platforming these narratives and organisations like nia and Sistah Space to push for more comprehensive statistics and cultural awareness among governing bodies. A greater emphasis on Afrofeminist data will ultimately be the building block for more informed insights into the realities and concerns of Black women in the UK. We must continue striving to make this issue a top priority, not just for us but for everyone.

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disastrid · 6 months

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Since 1790, the decennial census has played a crucial role in creating and reshaping the ever-changing views of racial and ethnic identity in the United States.

Over the centuries, the census has evolved from one that specified broad categories — primarily “free white” people and “slaves” — to one that attempts to encapsulate the country’s increasingly complex demographics. The latest adaptation proposed by the Biden administration in January seeks to allow even more race and ethnicity options for people to describe themselves than the 2020 census did.

If approved, the proposed overhaul would most likely be adopted across all surveys in the country about health, education and the economy. Here’s what the next census could look like.

[ This article is a little interactive with floating text boxes etc, so its hard to screenshot effectively. ]

In some ways, the government is attempting to catch up with modern views of racial and ethnic identities.

There are complicated politics at work too, and the proposed changes have provoked criticism among some scholars and activists.

Many Hispanic or Latino U.S. residents mark “some other race,” typically because they don’t see themselves as “Black” or “white.” Supporters of the proposal say the changes reflect that Latinos have long been treated as a distinct racial group in the United States. But Afro-Latino scholars argue that the new method would mask important racial differences among Latinos.

Community leaders have been advocating for a “Middle Eastern or North African” category for years, pointing to the need for better data for this growing population, especially around health care, education and political representation. If the proposal is approved, this would be the first time since the 1970s that a completely new racial or ethnic category is added to the census.

A precise, universally accepted distinction between race and ethnicity does not exist. Instead, there’s a murky history of law, politics and culture around racial identity in America.

“There is no such thing as a perfect question,” said Roberto Ramirez, a population statistics expert at the U.S. Census Bureau. The bureau has conducted numerous tests in recent decades to improve the census so that people can more accurately identify themselves, he said.

If approved, the new race and ethnicity formulation will have wide-ranging impacts. Any organization receiving federal funding — down to local schools — would have to adhere to it. Race data informs how resources are distributed; whether equal employment policies and anti-discrimination laws can be enforced; and how congressional districts are drawn.

Ever since the census began measuring the U.S. population, race has been central to the counting. The census is more than a bureaucratic exercise; it embodies the country’s continued efforts to neatly categorize inherently nuanced and layered identities. Terms that are now widely viewed as outdated or even offensive had their place on the official forms for decades.

#census #data #information science #information access #civil rights #race and ethnicity #this is an interesting article if you can get access #i fucking hate paywalls but don't have the time to screenshot it all right now.

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kimberly40 · 1 year

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Melungeons are descendants of people of mixed ethnic ancestry who, before the end of the eighteenth century, were discovered living in limited areas of what is now the southeastern United States, notably in the Appalachian Mountains near the point where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina converge. Earlier they may have lived near the Atlantic coast but, preferring a more secluded setting and seeking refuge from persecution, chose to move west as the coastal region became more densely populated by newcomers from Virginia and elsewhere.

The origin and early history of Melungeons remain relatively unknown. They have been identified at various times as having Portuguese, Spanish, French, Welsh, and Turkish ancestry; some theories even claim that they are descendants of members of Roanoke Island's Lost Colony of 1587. Most modern researchers have concluded that their ethnicity is triracial, with European, Native American, and African lineage. Their earliest ancestors may have been explorers, seamen, or colonists stranded along the Atlantic coast before permanent settlement had begun who later intermarried with Indians and Africans.

Melungeon skin tones varied from dark to light, reflecting their mixed heritage. In time, the U.S. Census Bureau classified them as "free persons of color." Because of their unique appearance, Melungeons faced extensive racial and social prejudice throughout much of their history. Although rarely subject to legal restrictions such as those imposed on blacks and Native Americans, they were often ostracized socially because of their nonwhite heritage. The term "Melungeon" itself was created and used as an insult by whites. Most researchers believe that it derived from the French word mélange, which means "mixture." Other possible linguistic roots include melon can, Turkish for "cursed soul"; the Italian word melongena, technically meaning "eggplant" but used in reference to someone with dark skin; and melan, the Greek word for "black." In any case, "Melungeon" came to signify a person of low social status and "impure" bloodlines, who was ignorant or possessed other negative traits.

The mystery surrounding Melungeons also led to a variety of folk beliefs, some of which portrayed them as frightening mythical creatures capable of evil deeds, including kidnapping children who misbehaved. While Melungeon ancestry is not uncommon in North Carolina Mountain counties such as Alleghany, Mitchell, and Ashe, the majority of Melungeons eventually settled in urban areas throughout the Southeast and became practically indistinguishable as a separate ethnic group. For generations, many people, seeking to avoid being stigmatized, ignored or denied their Melungeon ancestry. By the late twentieth century, however, several organizations were celebrating and seeking information about possible Melungeon family histories. In addition, researchers continue to examine Melungeon origins, at times employing such advanced technologies as DNA testing to trace previously undetectable bloodlines.

By William S. Powell, 2006

References:

Bonnie Ball, The Melungeons: Notes on the Origin of a Race (1992).

Jim Callahan, Lest We Forget: The Melungeon Colony of Newman's Ridge (2000).

Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Melungeons: The Last Lost Tribe in America (2005).

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lifewithchronicpain · 1 year

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Much of the race-related research on chronic pain in the United States only compares Black and White Americans, leaving out many other ethnic groups and demographics.

In an attempt to broaden our understanding of who experiences pain and why, researchers culled through eight years of public surveys conducted by the CDC and the U.S. Census Bureau from 2010 to 2018. These National Health Interview Surveys gathered information from White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American and multiracial Americans, giving us new insight into the role of race in pain prevalence.

“People often tend to think about pain as a personal issue or personal struggle, but it’s really a broad social and societal issue,” says Anna Zajacova, PhD, a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario and lead author of Beyond Black vs White, a study recently published in the journal PAIN.

In addition to race, Zajacova and her colleagues looked at socioeconomic factors such as education, family income, home ownership and whether someone was born in the U.S. or abroad. They found that racial disparities in pain are far larger than previously recognized, with Native Americans nearly five times more likely to have severe pain than Asian Americans. Hispanics, Whites and Blacks fell between the two extremes. (Read more at link)

#chronic pain #disability #ableism #racism #medical bias #article

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literally-just-for-this-project · 1 year

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Sources

Abuelezam, Nadia N., Awad, Germine H., Ajrouch, Kristine J., and Matthew Jaber Stiffler. 2022. “Lack of Arab or Middle Eastern and North African Health Data Undermines Assessment of Health Disparities.” American Journal of Public Health 112(2):209–12

Awad, Germine H., Hanan Hashem, and Hien Nguyen. 2021. “Identity and Ethnic/Racial Self-Labeling among Americans of Arab or Middle Eastern and North African Descent.” Identity 21(2):115–30

Arab American. “Dept. of Justice Affirms Arab Race in 1909: The Arab American Historical Foundation Home.” Arab American. Retrieved April 26, 2023 (https://www.arabamericanhistory.org/archives/dept-of-justice-affirms-arab-race-in-1909/).

Beydoun, Khaled A. 2014. “Between Muslim and White: The Legal Construction of Arab American Identity.” SSRN. Retrieved September 25, 2022 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2529506)

The Federal Register. Federal Register :: Request Access. Retrieved April 13, 2023 (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/01/27/2023-01635/initial-proposals-for-u pdating-ombs-race-and-ethnicity-statistical-standards).

Griffith, Bryan. 2002. “Immigrants from the Middle East.” CIS.org. Retrieved September 25, 2022 (https://cis.org/Report/Immigrants-Middle-East).

Haney-López Ian. 2006. in White by law: The Legal Construction of Race (Critical America). New York University Press.

Maghbouleh, Neda, Ariela Schachter, and René D. Flores. 2022. “Middle Eastern and North African Americans May Not Be Perceived, nor Perceive Themselves, to Be White.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(7).

Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration,. 1997. “Recommendations From the Interagency Committee for the Review of the Racial and Ethnic Standards to the Office of Management and Budget Concerning Changes to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.” 62 FR 36874, Retrieved September 25, 2022

Anon. n.d. “Middle East/North Africa (MENA).” United States Trade Representative. (https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-east/north-africa).

Anon. n.d. “Middle Eastern and North African Americans May Not Be Perceived ... - PNAS.”

Fukuyama, Francis. 2019. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York, NY: Picador.

Louise Cainkar. n.d. “MENA Americans: A Socially Disadvantaged Group.”

(https://www2.mu.edu/social-cultural-sciences/directory/documents/cainkar-mena-reports.pdf).

Mora, G. Cristina. 2014. Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Aziz, Sahar F. 2020. “Legally White, Socially Brown: Racialization of Middle Eastern Americans.” SSRN Electronic Journal.

Blake, John. 2010. “Arab- and Persian-American Campaign: 'Check It Right' on Census.” CNN. Retrieved April 26, 2023 (https://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/01/census.check.it.right.campaign/).

Krogstad, Jens Manuel. 2020. “Census Bureau Explores New Middle East/North Africa Ethnic Category.” Pew Research Center. Retrieved April 26, 2023 (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/03/24/census-bureau-explores-new-middle-eastnorth-africa-ethnic-category/).

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1solone · 2 years

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Latino or Hispanic is a term coined by the United States to identify Spanish-speaking people coming from south of Mexico. However, the reality is Spanish-speaking people from Latin America come from a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds.

Since 2011, more Latinos/Hispanics identify as Native American, census shows. Even the New York Times features their article on the cultural change and perspective of Indigenous identity among mestizos, mulattos, and Indigenous people. I also want to add that Indigenous people who migrated from South America to the United States do not have access to their identity in this cross-cultural migration process. Hence, they wrestle with the ethnic label “Mestizo” and “Latino.”

Latino comes from the root word Latin which corresponds to the nations that used to form the Roman Empire: Spain, Portugal, Romania, Italy, and France. According to El Boricua, ” The word Hispania thus refers to the people and culture of the Iberian peninsula, Spain in particular. The term Hispano (Hispanic) later was used in referring to Spain and its subsequent New World – New Spain, conquered territories which covers most of Latino America.” The white-mestizo society or descendants of Spanish relatives can claim these labels to themselves because they are Spanish or Latin-descendant for the matter.

From the book Race and Classification: “Whatever the popular and indigenous sentiment that gave rise to a latino identity from below, from above it has been an invention of Cuban American advertising executives in south Florida and New York, who in the 1970s and 1980s were eager to lump and homogenize small national latin American group identity into a larger unitary market sector. If they could create a clear identifiable ‘latino market’, they stood to profit enormously. They could then persuade a large food, beverage, and product manufactures that ‘latinos’ constituted a significant mass market that needed special advertising.”

As the quote states, from above, meaning America, the corporations reinforced this umbrella term “latino” for money. It is very damaging as it completely masks thousands of diverse indigenous people that speak Spanish and lumps them all together under a false identity. It destroys our true identity. Our identity as indigenous people from here (in Nahuatl – ‘nican titlaca’).

No, we are not Hispanic – we are not from Spain.

No, we are not Spaniards just because we speak Spanish.

Yes, we are nican titlaca, indigenous people to this land or Anawatla'ka (from Anahuac, our original name for America.

Use an identity that’s going to liberate us, not enslave us to this European culture!

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meandmybigmouth · 1 year

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IT HAS ADDED WOMEN, GAYS\TRANS AMERICANS AND HAS GONE ON FOR DECADES! NO ONE GROUP IN AMERICA IS SAFE FROM BEING SINGLED OUT AND OPPRESSED!

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dsm-v · 2 years

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it has come to my attention that apparently many people don’t quite know the backstory as to Why Arabs are Classified as White According to the US Census Bureau and other US demographic statistics. arabs are classified as white because like a hundred years ago people who were immigrating to the US from the Ottoman Empire (often Christians) lobbied and sued the United States government *in order to be legally recognized as white*. Unlike other classes of brown immigrants who tried this approach, the Arabs actually won their suits and an assimilationist spirit toward white American culture is the entire reason that people from the regions of SWANA are classified as white in the US. For more information on this please see A History of Islam in America by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, especially chapter 4 entitled: “Race, Ethnicity, Religion, and Citizenship: Muslim Immigration at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”

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marylemanski · 2 years

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I have been posting an ongoing list of all of the civil and human rights rollbacks during the Trump administration. See my page for earlier lists. Below is a list from the first quarter of the second year of Trump’s administration. At this time, Republicans actively started dismantling and rearranging offices within the Executive Branch, while going after refugees, education, healthcare (including Medicaid), poor people, and transgender people. PLEASE SHARE.

On January 4, Sessions rescinded guidance that had allowed states, with minimal federal interference, to legalize marijuana. This move will further reignite the War on Drugs.

On January 8, Trump re-nominated a slate of unqualified and biased judicial nominees, including two rated Not Qualified by the American Bar Association.

On January 8, the administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for nearly 200,000 Salvadorans.

On January 11, the Trump administration released new guidelines that allow states to seek waivers to require Medicaid recipients to work – requirements that represent a throwback to rejected racial stereotypes.

On January 12, the Trump administration approved a waiver allowing Kentucky to require Medicaid recipients to work.

On January 16, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Mulvaney’s leadership announced it would reconsider the agency’s payday lending rule.

On January 17, the administration announced its decision to bar citizens from Haiti from receiving H2-A and H2-B visas.

On January 18, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposed rule to allow health care providers to discriminate against patients, and within the department’s Office for Civil Rights, a new division – the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division – to address related claims.

On January 18, the CFPB abruptly dropped a lawsuit against four online payday lenders who unlawfully made loans of up to 950 percent APR in at least 17 states.

On January 25, the Census Bureau announced that the questionnaire for the 2018 End-to-End Census Test will use race and ethnicity questions from the 2010 Census instead of updated questions recommended by Census Bureau staff. This suggests that the Office of Management and Budget will not revise the official standards for collecting and reporting this data, despite recommendations from a federal agency working group to do so.

On February 1, The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice was effectively closing its Office for Access to Justice, which was designed to make access to legal aid more accessible.

On February 1, reports surfaced claiming Trump’s Labor Department concealed an economic analysis that found working people could lose billions of dollars in wages under its proposal to roll back an Obama-era rule – a rule that protects working people in tipped industries from having their tips taken away by their employers.

On February 1, multiple sources reported that acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney had transferred the consumer agency’s Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity from the Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending division to the director’s office. The move essentially gutted the unit responsible for enforcing anti-lending discrimination laws.

On February 2, the Trump administration approved a waiver allowing Indiana to require some Medicaid recipients to work.

On February 12, the Trump administration released its Fiscal Year 2019 budget proposal, which would deny critical health care to those most in need simply to bankroll the president’s wall through border communities. The proposal would also eliminate the Community Relations Service – a Justice Department office established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which has been a key tool that helps address discrimination, conflicts, and tensions in communities around the country.

On February 12, the Trump administration released an infrastructure proposal that would reward the rich and special interests at the expense of low-income communities and communities of color and leave behind too many American communities and those most in need.

On February 12, BuzzFeed News reported that the U.S. Department of Education would no longer investigate complaints filed by transgender students who have been banned from using the restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. On the same day, the department released a statement saying Trump’s budget “protects vulnerable students” – a dubious claim.

On February 26, the U.S. Department of Education proposed to delay implementation of a rule that enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The rule implements the IDEA’s provisions regarding significant disproportionality in the identification, placement, and discipline of students with disabilities with regard to race and ethnicity.

On March 5, the Trump administration approved Arkansas’ request to require some Medicaid recipients to work.

On March 5, the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education released a new Case Processing Manual (CPM) that creates greater hurdles for people filing complaints and allows dismissal of civil rights complaints based on the number of times an individual has filed.

On March 5, a Department of Housing and Urban Development memo announced Secretary Ben Carson’s consideration of revising the agency’s mission statement and removing anti-discrimination language and promises of inclusive communities.

On March 12, Attorney General Sessions announced the Justice Department’s ‘school safety’ plan – a plan that civil rights advocates criticized as militarizing schools, overpolicing children, and harming students, disproportionately students of color.

On March 14, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 4909, the Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.

On March 23, Trump issued new orders to ban most transgender people from serving in the military – the latest iteration of a ban that he had initially announced in a series of tweets in July 2017.

On March 23, Trump signed a spending bill that included the STOP School Violence Act, which civil rights organizations are concerned will exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline crisis, further criminalize historically marginalized children, and increase the militarization of, and over-policing in, schools and communities of color.

On March 26, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that he had directed the Census Bureau to add an untested and unnecessary question to the 2020 Census form, which would ask the citizenship status of every person in America.

Source: https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/#2018

#trump administration #civil rights #republican party #education #transgender rights

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dankusner · 27 days

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Federal collection of race data getting an overhaul

New standards issued by White House will affect multiple departments

WASHINGTON – The White House on Thursday announced new standards for collecting federal data on race and ethnicity, a decision that will touch organizations that receive federal funding, determine how congressional districts are drawn and whether equal employment policies can be enforced.

The standards from the White House’s Office of Management & Budget – revised for the first time since 1997 – requires federal agencies to use one combined question for race and ethnicity, encourages respondents to select multiple options on how they identify and adds Middle Eastern or North African as a new identification category.

The move underscores the government’s attempt to catch up with modern views of racial and ethnic identities in the United States and shows how federal officials are attempting to capture the complexities of a country that has grown more multiracial.

The data they collect is expected to have far-reaching consequences on the U.S. census, the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act and other anti-discrimination laws.

'Our focus here really is on how do we ensure we have high-quality federal data on race and ethnicity,' a senior OMB official said.

The official added the new standards will identify different impacts on 'individuals, programs and services, health outcomes, employment outcomes, educational outcomes …'

The official declined to identify the federal programs this will affect. The standards were first proposed under former President Barack Obama but were subsequently delayed under former President Donald Trump.

Since 1997, the U.S. government has distilled terms such as 'white,' 'black' and 'Hispanic' into standardized definitions that have stayed the same since then.

This established a base line for federal surveys that ask people to self-report their racial and ethnic identities.

The officials said the decisions were based on the findings of a working group, which comprised of staff from 35 federal agencies, more than 20,000 public comments and 94 listening sessions.

The new standards will not impact the issue of repayment for slavery or reparations.

The collection of data from Black Americans to determine those who descended from enslaved people requires more research, the officials said.

'Our focus here really is on how do we ensure we have high-quality federal data on race and ethnicity.'

White House Office of Management & Budget

The new standards from the White House’s Office of Management & Budget underscore the government’s attempt to catch up with modern views of racial and ethnic identities in the United States. Brendan McDermid/REUTERS file Advertisement

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ausetkmt · 3 months

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Pew Research Center: Key facts about Black Americans

Angel C. Dye (left) celebrates her graduation from Howard University in Washington, D.C., with her friend Renee Walter on May 13, 2017. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The number of Black people living in the United States reached a new high of 47.9 million in 2022, up about a third (32%) since 2000, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. This group is diverse, with a growing number and share born outside the U.S. and an increasing number saying they are of two or more races.

For Black History Month, here are key facts about the nation’s Black population. In this analysis, the Black population is made up of three main groups: single-race, non-Hispanic Black people; non-Hispanic, multiracial Black people; and Black Hispanics. You can also read our newly updated fact sheet about Black Americans in 2022.

This analysis is based on Pew Research Center tabulations of microdata from the Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, provided through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota. The analysis identifies the nation’s Black population through self-reports of racial and ethnic identity on the 2022 ACS. The Black population includes single-race non-Hispanic Black people, multiracial non-Hispanic Black people and those who say they are Black and Hispanic. All displayed numbers are rounded. Shares and percent changes are calculated using unrounded numbers.

The analysis relies on respondent self-identification of race and ethnicity in the Census Bureau data sources such as the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) to identify the nation’s Black population. The racial and ethnic categories used in census data have changed over time – including question wording, format and instructions – and may affect how people identify by race and ethnicity. Read “What Census Calls Us” for more details on how U.S. racial and ethnic categories have changed since 1790. Moreover, respondents’ perceptions of the questions and their own racial and ethnic identity can change in response to individual circumstances and the way the nation sees race and itself. Starting in 2000, Americans could select more than once racial category in census forms. Before that, many multiracial people were counted in only one racial category.

Analyses of race and ethnicity of spouses can only be done for those spouses residing in the same household; that is, the spouse does not have a separate official residence, is not stationed away from home with the military, is not institutionalized, etc. For married Black adults, 91% reside with their spouse.

U.S. Black population or total Black population refers to the population of Americans who self-identify as Black in the United States. This includes those who say their race is only Black and that they are not Hispanic; those who say Black is one of two or more races in their identity and they are not Hispanic; and those who say they are Hispanic or Latino and either Black alone or in combination with other races. The terms Black population and Black people are used interchangeably.

Adults refers to those who are ages 18 or older.

The terms single-race, non-Hispanic Black; Black alone, non-Hispanic; and single-race Black are used interchangeably to refer to the same population. This population is made up of individuals who self-identify only as Black and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino.

The terms multiracial, non-Hispanic Black and multiracial Black are used to refer to people who self-identify as two or more races and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino.

The term Black Hispanic is used to refer to those who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino and as Black, either alone or in combination with other races. This group is not the same as the nation’s Afro-Latino population as not all Black Hispanics identify as Afro-Latino and not all Afro-Latinos identify as Black or Hispanic.

Foreign born refers to persons born outside of the United States to parents neither of whom was a U.S. citizen. The terms foreign born and immigrant are used interchangeably.

U.S. born refers to persons born in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The term also refers to those born abroad to a parent who was a U.S. citizen.

The Black population in the U.S. has grown by 32% since 2000, rising from 36.2 million then to 47.9 million in 2022. Notably, the number of people self-identifying as another race in addition to Black has increased nearly 254% since 2000. This reflects a broader national shift in the number of Americans identifying as multiracial, as well as changes to how the U.S. Census Bureau asks about race and ethnicity. The number of Black Americans who say they are Hispanic has also risen sharply over this period, up 199% since 2000.

The arrival of new immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere has been an important contributor to Black population growth. In 2022, there were 5.1 million Black immigrants in the U.S., up from 2.4 million in 2000, according to our analysis of Census Bureau data. Immigrants accounted for 11% of the Black population in 2022, up from 7% in 2000.

The Black population has grown fastest in states that historically have not had large numbers of Black residents. Utah experienced the fastest growth in its Black population between 2010 and 2022, with an increase of 86%. The Black populations of Hawaii and Nevada increased by 57% and 56%, respectively, during that span. (This only counts states with Black populations of at least 25,000 in 2010.)

The states that experienced the largest numerical increases in Black residents between 2010 and 2022 are also those with the largest Black populations overall: Texas (which saw growth of 1 million Black residents between 2010 and 2022); Florida (up 745,000) and Georgia (up 595,000). Each of these states now has a Black population larger than that of New York, which ranked first in 2010.

Meanwhile, the Black population declined in the District of Columbia (-2%) and Illinois (-1%) between 2010 and 2022.

New York City has more Black residents than any other metropolitan area. About 3.6 million Black Americans live in the New York metro area. Other metro areas with large Black populations include Atlanta (2.2 million), Chicago (1.7 million) and Washington, D.C. (1.6 million).

As a share of the population, the Atlanta area is home to a higher percentage of Black people than any other metro area with at least 1 million Black residents. Nearly four-in-ten residents of the Atlanta metro area (36%) are Black. The next highest shares are the metro areas of Washington (28%), Detroit (24%) and Philadelphia (23%).

The Black population of the U.S. is relatively young. In 2022, the median age of Black Americans was 32.1 years, meaning half of the nation’s Black population was younger than that age and half was older. By comparison, the median age of the nation overall was 38.0 that year.

The median age among single-race, non-Hispanic Black Americans was 34.9 in 2022, compared with 21.0 among Black Hispanics and 19.5 among multiracial, non-Hispanic Black Americans.

Educational attainment among Black Americans is on the rise. In 2022, 26.1% of Black adults ages 25 and older – 7.8 million people – had earned at least a bachelor’s degree. That was up from 14.5% in 2000.

Growing shares of Black women and Black men alike have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. But Black women have made faster gains than Black men.

In 2022, 28.9% of Black women ages 25 and older had earned at least a bachelor’s degree, up from 15.4% in 2000. Among Black men in the same age range, by comparison, 22.8% had earned at least a bachelor’s degree in 2022, up from 13.4% in 2000.

Black Americans are less likely than other Americans to be married. About a third of Black adults (32%) are currently married. That compares with 53% of adults who are not Black.

Among Black adults, 36% of men are married, compared with 29% of women. Black women, in turn, are slightly more likely than Black men to be divorced (14% vs. 10%) or widowed (8% vs. 2%).

About a sixth of married Black adults (17%) are married to someone who is not Black. This includes 21% of married Black men and 13% of married Black women. These shares only consider those who are married and whose spouses live in the same households.

Married Black women, in turn, are more likely than married Black men to have a spouse who is also Black (87% vs. 79%). This includes spouses who are single-race Black, multiracial Black and Black Hispanic.

Black households had a median annual income of $50,000 in 2022. That included a median income of $60,000 among multiracial Black households, $56,500 among Black Hispanic households and $49,500 among single-race Black households.

Looked at another way, about half of all Black households (51%) had a household income of $50,000 or more in 2022, while 49% earned less than that.

Meanwhile, a recent Pew Research Center analysis found that Black households made gains during the pandemic when it comes to wealth – the difference between the value of assets owned and debts owed. The typical single-race, non-Hispanic Black household saw a 77% increase in its wealth from December 2019 ($15,300) to December 2021 ($27,100).

#Key facts about the nation’s 47.9 million Black Americans #Black Lives Matter #Black #Black Americans

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ethn11winter24 · 3 months

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Intolerance and Discrimination Towards Religious Communities

By: Matthew Bachelier

The United States of America is best known as a “melting pot” because of the diversity present throughout the country whether it be race, ethnicity, religion, and more. According to the 2020 U.S. census, about seventeen different types of religions are present and practiced in America. Twenty-three percent of the population is unaffiliated and is the majority of the population, but the largest religion present in the U.S. is White mainline protestant making up sixteen percent of the population.

So with that being said, are people of a minority religion faced with intolerance or discrimination? A group that experiences hardships often is the Jewish community. The Jewish community makes up about one percent of the population in the U.S. I would argue that Jews can fit into the Model Minority category as many stereotypes have been made about how they are financially successful. Many assumptions are made about the Jewish community being wealthy and in control of economic institutions, which is an oversimplification of who they are as a whole. Another Challenge faced by the Jewish Community is that Anti-semitism is still present in the U.S. and this can often lead to hate crimes targeted at their community. According to ABC News on October 28, 2018, a man by the name of Robert Bowers walked into a Pittsburg Synagogue and shot and killed 11 worshipers. These acts of antisemitism in the U.S. create a negative impact on the Jewish communities day to day lives and a narrative that they are not welcome or wanted in the U.S. The Jewish community has resorted to hiring full-time bodyguards to help protect the people attending the synagogue and the synagogue itself, they are simply trying to worship their God and follow their faith.

Another community and religion in the U.S. that very often experiences intolerance or discrimination is the Muslim faith. After the horrific acts that occurred on September 11, 2001, the Muslim community has been seen as nothing but a threat in the U.S. According to the New York Times and a study conducted at the California State University, San Bernardino in 2015, hate crimes against the American Muslims were up seventy-eight percent. People of the Muslim community face constant adversity when leaving their homes when wearing traditional Muslim or Middle Eastern attire. Muslims are seen as a threat and dangerous everywhere they go especially in airports. Less than three percent of passengers receive a pat down or secondary screen when going through security at the airport, meanwhile, thirty-six percent of Muslim Americans have to go through a pat down or secondary screening. If this statistic does not demonstrate the stereotypes created about the Muslim community being a constant threat to the Security of the U.S., I am not sure what will. The point here is being different and a minority of any kind means many will jump to conclusions about you or accept stereotypes that have been created whether they are good or bad.

Sources:

“PRRI Census of American Religion: 2020.” PRRI, 16 Jan. 2024, www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/.

ABC News, ABC News Network, abcnews.go.com/US/pittsburgh-synagogue-mass-shooting-jury-reaches-verdict-death/story?id=101220141. Accessed 18 Jan. 2024.

Lichtblau, Eric. “Hate Crimes against American Muslims Most since Post-9/11 Era.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Sept. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/us/politics/hate-crimes-american-muslims-rise.html.

More Sources:

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