 | Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America Subjects: Emigration and immigration -- Social aspects; Emigration and immigration -- Public opinion; Emigration and immigration -- Government policy; Nativism; Eugenics; Schrag (Paradise Lost) offers a scholarly history of the political movements that have sought to restrict immigration to the U.S. since its founding-from the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party through the years of American eugenics "research" that vastly influenced the Nazis in the years leading up to WWII. He points out how the same anti-immigration and anti-immigrant arguments have been recycled across generations: most notably the idea that certain groups-be they the Irish, Jews, Chinese, or Mexicans-were "inassimilable." Though he doesn't provide any especially new insights, Schrag has assembled a fine history of nativist movements and the reasons why their rhetoric has been so seductive at particular points in history. The book would have been well-served had Schrag devoted more time to untangling the provocative idea he concludes with: that rather than "becoming white" and thus acceptable-the path trod by previous generations of European and Jewish immigrants-today's Latino and Asian immigrants may be shifting the paradigm and derailing the very mechanism that keeps the U.S. on a locked pattern of exclusion and race-based fearmongering against new immigrants. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved Schrag Peter : Peter Schrag, for many years the editorial page editor and later a weekly columnist for the Sacramento Bee, currently contributes to The Nation, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of several books, including Paradise Lost and California: America's High-Stakes Experiment (both from UC Press) and Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America's Schools. Peter Schrag is the 2010 winner of the Carey McWilliams Award from the California Studies Association. |
