The chapter 5 of book "Ethnicity and Race in American Life" talks about the discrimination against German in Pennsylvania where they were one third of the population. They were considered as unassimilable alien bloc. We saw the racial prejudice against Germans in Benjamin's Essay as well. i wonder if it is just because they retained their culture and stayed as a group rather than assimilating was the factor for the discrimination or is they any other political or economical reasons behind it. Was german a threat to British empire during that time and expanding its territory further in Europe. is this something to think about? there will not be any kind of prejudice or discrimination without anything right. if anyone knows about it let me know.
I think discrimination occurs to every group of immigration. It doesn’t matter where an individual is from or what his or her reason for immigrating is. People who consider themselves “Americans” will eventually feel threatened by the increase in different ethnic populations. They probably have a sense of nationalism and are afraid that these immigrants will soon take over America and bury the “American” culture, language, and government. So I don’t necessarily think that there is a certain reason why Germans were discriminated. It’s actually quite common for every ethnic group that immigrates to America, which includes the French, Irish, Asians, etc.
ReplyDeleteDiscrimination against minorities is nothing new. When mass amounts of immigrants come to a country they bring their culture with them. This can be seen to the locales as the "destruction of their own culture by aliens". America has had a very big problem with this because so many cultures arrive bring their own cultures. From Irish to Polish, this mass immigration might alarm Americans.
ReplyDelete