Immigration and race attitudes

Front matter

\ OF PRI¥f <i ver a eile OF oy Division Wl Loa B67

Heath Social Relations Heries

HEATH SOCIAL RELATIONS SERIES JEROME DAVIS, Yale University General Editor

Foreword

Few Americans realize the importance or the extent of what is probably the greatest single issue confronting America, that of race relationships. No matter to what section of the United States we turn, we find that a major racial problem stares us in the face. In the South the question of the Negro is easily one of our most perplexing conundrums, in spite of the great efforts to solve it now being made by Southerners. In the East the great numbers of immigrants working in factory, mine, and mill present peculiar difficulties in industrial, not to speak of community, relationships. In the West the Japanese problem not only led our Senate suddenly to break the “‘ Gentlemen’s Agreement,” but it still persists in causing friction and racial animosities.

The last United States Census showed that there were 13,112,754 foreign-born inhabitants of the United States. This is thirteen per cent of the total population, or about one out of every eight. If we include those who were born of foreign and mixed parentage, the number ‘rises to the astonishing total of 36,398,958 — 34.4 per cent. Assuming a normal sample, at least one out of three people whom we meet, on the average, is either foreign-born or of foreign parentage.

We have had a great number of books attempting to describe the rising tide of foreigners who threaten to change or engulf our customary American behavior code. The present text is unique among all previous books on immigration in the following respects:

First, it makes use of the case method. Instead of treating the subject by using abstract material with a finely integrated theory, it presents case material of fascinating

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Vill FOREWORD human interest —fascinating because true. Whatever principles are given are based on an overwhelming array of factual data.

Second, it is the only text which considers in detail the fundamental basis of all race relationships: namely, racial attitude. The causes, consequences, and cures of racial complexes, stereotypes, and antipathies are fully treated. The author deals with changes in attitude, racial friendliness as — well as the relation of the race problem to personality, public opinion, education, and social service.

Third, it is one of the few treatises which recognizes the necessity for giving at least as much attention to the attitude of the native-white American as to the various minority groups within our population.

Finally, the author has attempted to secure evidence for his study by statistical summaries of the “ social distance ” of hundreds of Americans. Though it is too early to be sure that these tabulations are large enough to be representative of the average American attitude, he has gone further than most other writers on this subject in basing his conclusions on inductive data. Whether or not his conclusions at some time in the future will have to be modified, at present no student of immigration can afford to ignore them. The class which now studies immigration without using some of the material contained herein can hardly be said to have adequately studied our American race problem.

JEROME Davis

Preface

In this report on findings concerning racial attitudes the writer has drawn upon his experiences as a participant in the Pacific Coast Race Relations Survey, the Southwest Mexican Immigrant Survey, and Social Distance Studies (with materials secured from the eastern and southern sections of the United States as well as from the western). Each discussion begins with observable data and classifies and interprets these as found in dynamic human experiences. The interpretations have also been made in the light of a wide range of ethnological and sociological investigations that have been conducted by research people in many lands.

In this study one major theme has been pursued throughout — the theme of race attitudes, which is at the heart of race problems and conflicts. It stimulates investigation that is full of groping. It requires pioneering. The results are tentative; more problems exist at the close of such a study than at the beginning.

The writer is indebted to all those authorities who have contributed in the past to an understanding of social attitudes and values, particularly of racial attitudes and values. He is especially indebted to many persons who have contributed from their racial experiences, but he alone is responsible for any shortcomings in the findings.

Emory S. Bocarpus

Contents

Epitor’s ForREWworD

PREFACE .

Part I— Approach The Immigration Problem

Race ATTITUDES Wee Status AND Race ATTITUDES .

PART II— ORIGINS AND CHANGE OricIns oF Race ANTIPATHY Mepia or ANTIPATHY ORIGINS OF RacE FRIENDLINESS .

MepiAa oF Race FRIENDLINESS CHANGES IN RacIAL ATTITUDES .

REVERSALS OF Race ATTITUDES CoUNTER-ATTITUDES Sratic ATTITUDES

PART III — VARIATION REGIONAL AND CULTURAL CONTACTS. . AcE VARIATIONS Sex DISTINCTIONS

OccuPATIONAL COMPLEXES Reuicious DIFFERENCES

PART IV —ADJUSTMENT PERSONALITY AND RacE PROBLEMS Pusiic OPINION AND RAcE PROBLEMS EDUCATION AND RacE PROBLEMS SocraL SERVICE AND Race PROBLEMS INDEX

PAGE i map ANON a a.

WAR

Part I Approach |

AE

Chapter I The Immigration Problem

A migrating person is interesting. He is more than flesh and bones, more than clothes, a bundle on his back, and a satchel in his hand —he is a culture medium, and a part of all human life that has preceded him. In one sense he is an emigrant, trying to get away from something; from another viewpoint, he is an immigrant, trying to get into new situations. It is in the latter rdle that he will be considered here. In the next few pages he will be viewed as a composite of many immigrants from many climes.?

The immigrant is a moving event in a long concourse. He is possessed of a fascinating set of behavior patterns and an elaborate kit of attitudes and values. Some of these patterns and attitudes have been relatively fixed; others are fluid; all have originated in response to psychosocial stimuli, and all are subject to change, but in varying degrees and under different conditions.

As a person on the move, the immigrant is characterized by mental mobility. He is troubled by dissatisfactions and unmet longings which have driven him forth. His face is set forward with anticipations. Even his fixations of action have their vulnerable spots.

The immigrant is a native on the march; he is a native of one country, trying to become a part of another country. He is a native, carrying evidences of his habitat not only on his back but in his sentiments, in his attitudes, and in his hopes. He is a native seeking “ a more stately mansion ”

1 Based on a range of data secured by interview and life-history methods. A statistical treatment will be given later.

for his soul and the souls of those who are a part of him. He is a normal human being with loves and hates, fears and suspicions — in turmoil.

The immigrant dimly anticipates the necessity of making major changes and recoils. Grave rumors stare him in the face, but certain minor adjustments he takes as a matter of course. Letters from relatives or friends have partially prepared him, but the “ worst’ is often magnified, and the “best ” does not materialize. He is shuttled back and forth between high hopes and dread fears. Now he is expansive, and soon a defense attitude develops.

The culture-change process begins when the immigrant decides to move. Promptly upon casting the die, upon seeing himself in a “ breaking-loose ” capacity, the old order grows more precious. The conflict of deciding pales before the conflict of breaking old ties. The first centers in the future, with its unknown elements; the second rocks the past, with its sentiments.

Personality-culture change is stimulated and jolted by the necessity of ‘“ selling out,” of buying tickets, of saying good-bye to familiar scenes and one’s beloved, with the piercing thought that this may be a final good-bye, and that “you can never tell what may happen.” Time and again sentiment is wrenched. Personality meets the tests, now with defense reactions and now with stoicism. There is a mental clinging to the old and a running forward to the new. The whole structure of personality culture is shaken loose from its established moorings.

Then comes “ the putting out to sea.” It is too late to recant. The familiar faces stand out, in memory. The crowd of strangers jostles. Here and there episodes occur that challenge the attention of even a forlorn and stormtossed mariner on new culture waves.

The immigrant arrives. So many things seem different; expectations are shocked. At first he sees things as differ-

THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM 5 ent, and then he is made to seem different. He is different. This awareness is isolating. He left the old and is now in the new — but lo, he turns out to be new, different, peculiar, an object of mirth.

The journey, throbbing with new experiences, is ended. Unpleasant temporary adjustments have been faced; the steerage has been endured. Confidence in human nature, built up in a peasant primary group, has been jarred; contacts with blasé strangers have been made. The mother tongue has failed, and exploitation has stalked across the immigrant’s pathway.

Arrival is a great shaking-up time. The expected does not turn up, and the unexpected lurks around nearly every corner. The new culture ways are puzzling, and often upsetting. Conflict rages in the mind of the immigrant; disillusionment develops, and restlessness ensues. Personality is disorganized.

The immigrant, now a stranger, does not receive so extensive a welcome as he anticipated. He may even be the butt of jokes and sneers. From an important person in a native village to a “ nobody ” in a strange mass is a ““come-down.” His sense of personal dignity and racial pride is treated lightly. His people and their ways are not on the pedestal; they are viewed as inferior, and he falls within the shadow. Another culture is on the throne. But to have his own culture unjustly berated is first baffling and then irritating. Resentment mingles with disappointment.

1. It is, indeed, a great disappointment to me, and it breaks my heart to think that many of the good Americans who have been in my country have misrepresented my people to their own people. I have seen exhibitions in museums and in the windows of banks and big stores of the primitive utensils, furniture, implements, etc., of the backward and ignorant Filipinos. Some books are full of the pictures of the naked Igorots and their primitive ways of living — people who number about one-twentieth of the whole population. Even the missionaries themselves, in their lectures and in their articles published in the papers, talk of the dark side of the Filipino life. Through all of these the American people in this country have formed the opinion that the Filipinos are hothing but backward, wild, uncivilized, and naked people.?

The conflict stages resulting from the immigrant’s experiences may be slow in developing. His social expectations may be so dynamic and well organized, and his understanding of the new culture ways so imperfect, that many slighting actions and even insults “pass over his head.” Or in certain cases, he may be so mentally prepared that.he overlooks insults, because they come from people who “ do not understand.”

On the other hand, mental conflicts may grow apace, and the disappointments end in the immigrant’s return to the homeland. The conditions in the new environment may prove, on the whole, less satisfactory than those in “ the old country.” Assimilation does not get under way. Isolation, both ways, occurs; and social distances remain unbridged.

2. 1 am disappointed in the United States. Since I was a very small girl I had heard of the wonder and freeness of the States, and at an early age I determined to leave the country of oppression and revolutions—my country, Mexico—and come to a place where all are equal and where all have peace and happiness. I find that this is only theoretically true of the United States.

My father was a landowner, and I had all the advantages of education through the grades and even high school. I attended the university for two years, but my father died, and I was compelled to cease further educational activities. At the time I did not feel badly over this, for I knew that it meant my realizing my ideal at least two years earlier — coming to the United States.

I had an uncle in the United States, who had written many interesting letters about his adopted country, so I immediately began preparations to join him. This I did, and as I landed in

2 Pacific Coast Race Relations Survey (unpublished manuscripts), Los Angeles, 1925.

THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM 7

L., I thought surely Paradise could not be more wonderful. I had at last reached my “ Mecca.”

My first undertaking was to attempt to secure a position, as after my father’s death the revolutionists had left us practically penniless. For weeks I went from door to door of the business houses, but to no avail, because I could not speak English. I enrolled in an evening school and with the assistance of my uncle soon had a fair command of practical English. However, by this time my dream country was beginning to hold less charm for me. All about me I could see trouble and disappointment on the faces of my fellow countrymen.

Then one day, being greatly discouraged, I went into a dirty restaurant and asked for a position. I had not the least idea what I could do in a restaurant, as I had never had a position in all my life. But to my astonishment the manager, who was a Mexican of the better class, employed me as a cashier. I worked at this for two months and then gave up the position to marry — my manager.

Being a more or less successful business man, he had accumulated a considerable bank account. My hopes were now for a home — a comfortable home like my father’s had been, —so we set out to buy a place in a nice, clean, residential district. We were turned down on every side because we were not Americans. As a free, unbiased country my dream land began to fade in the background, and all I could realize was that I was a Mexican.

We tried other sections of L., but always the same obstacle arose, and more and more. I was aware that my ideal was nothing more than an illusion.

My husband, a very kind man, has business interests here, and does not wish to leave. But I am entirely isolated from all that interests me. I have no friends, as I live in a neighborhood of Armenians and Russians who cannot speak English nor Spanish, and we have little in common.

Mr. L. and I are American citizens, but in name only, as there are many rights that we cannot share. I do not like America, and I hope some day to return to the land of my birth — the land I really love.’

Immigrants heavily laden with a foreign culture may arrive in large numbers in a new culture area and settle

$ Mexican Immigrant Survey of the Southwest (unpublished manuscripts), Los Angeles, 1927.

together or settle with fellow countrymen who have preceded them, and thus live in a protecting culture situation. The children first of all, then the men, and latest of all the women make contacts with the surrounding natives. As long as the invaders remain “in their place,” all goes well, even though their numbers increase rapidly.

But the presence of large numbers of “ foreigners ”’ represents an underlying competition. Immigrant children do not create a problem unless they reach a considerable percentage in the schools of the better-class neighborhoods or unless they are older or larger in size than the native-born children in given grades.

Numbers of unassimilated foreign women do not arouse race conflict attitudes, except indirectly through a high birth rate. Their many children may be pictured as a future menace. Slums are sometimes railed against and immigrants blamed. Sometimes slums are accepted as necessary evils; the denizens are pitied and even scorned.

Immigrants are treated as economic commodities because of the work they can do. As long as they remain docile and do not react against untoward conditions, they are tolerated in large numbers. For instance, despite large numbers of Mexicans in the Southwest today, no Americans are particularly disturbed by the presence of these noticeably different peoples. In fact, still larger numbers are being sought. As long as unskilled immigrant laborers, of any race, remain “in their place,” amenable to control, all goes well. But let a few of the more energetic of their number climb industrially, start a labor union, or lead a strike; let a few of the families move out from the immigrant neighborhood into a better-class neighborhood; let a few of their children take prizes or class offices at school — and straightway the underlying competition is recognized and social conflicts are stimulated. Immigrants, who have been encouraged because of the work they can do, are viewed

THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM 9 in a new light as potential competitors for rank, position, status. The slogan is raised: ‘‘ We are going to be overrun.” The press carries antirace propaganda. Native children quickly reflect the rising antirace feelings of their parents. The culture of the ‘‘ invaded ” area is in danger, and many are the defenders.

The industry and frugality of immigrants are dangerous to the status of the native group. Their potential abilities are feared. Many of their cultural ways are not understood, and misunderstandings create prejudices. Antirace propaganda is both subtly and openly spread, and an overt race conflict is at hand. In consequence, immigrants who are slowly becoming unconsciously assimilated are suddenly made race conscious. The chasm between the immigrant’s culture and the native culture is reopened and becomes even wider than before. ,

Assimilation processes are easily halted and turned back upon themselves. The immigrant who was unconsciously losing his own culture traits through modification is aroused by an adverse law or an adverse current of public opinion. It is announced, perhaps, that he must not use his own language or that he is to be ‘ Americanized,” and he promptly discovers that his homeland culture possesses an unsuspected preciousness. Indignant feelings and angry emotions lead to retaliative attitudes. A race clash or riot may break out, and racial antipathies may be greatly augmented. He may return in significant numbers to his native land.

Sometimes the immigrant who returns home has unconsciously changed. The “old” does not satisfy as it once did. And so he returns once more to the new culture area, this time to stay.

3. When I asked the Mexican women why they have returned to the United States, they told us that they “do not like to wash on stones.” In other words, when they get back to Mexico, the conditions seem unbearable. After having used washtubs in the United States, for instance, they cannot put up with the washing on stones, and so they struggle back to the United States.+

In a study of a considerable number of race conflicts, a lack of understanding and fellow feeling is usually found. This is social distance. If the factors giving rise to different degrees and grades of social distance can be described, then progress can be made in dissolving or even in preventing race conflicts. If these degrees and grades can be measured, then race attitudes, particularly those of antipathy and friendliness, can be analyzed and changes noted. Likewise, a scientific approach to the study of public opinion may be expected. Experimentation in measuring social distance has not yet reached the point of standardization.®

Race antipathy is a judgment, usually a prejudgment with an adverse emotional content. It is a defense reaction, a defense of one’s status or of the status of one’s group. Prejudice, at best, is a means, not always rational, of protecting social values; at worst, of destroying more social values than are protected. Prejudice is “ a conviction held by the other fellow.”’ My conviction regarding the shortcomings of any race is viewed by the members of that race as a race prejudice of mine. Prejudice tends to maintain social distance.

Racial friendliness means that a person understands or at least sympathizes with other races and would admit their representatives into status in his own groups. As understanding and sympathy grow, racial friendliness increases. The rise of racial good will is a natural process, subject to the laws of stimulus and response, and possibly of personal and social control.

To understand race attitudes it is necessary to know the

5 For some time the writer has been engaged in experimentation upon social-distance data and expects later to make a full report.

THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM 11 conditions under which they arise, develop, and change.® The essence of these conditions is usually found in personal experiences, and in the psychological and cultural backgrounds which influence a person’s interpretations of these experiences. Neither the immigrant nor the native may understand his racial experiences, nor the backgrounds in psychological and cultural processes, and hence it is necessary that all these be analyzed by research methods.

1. Have you or your parents ever moved from one part of this country to another part, involving extensive changes and taking considerable risk? If so, describe fully the mental conflicts, anticipations, disappointments, adjustments.

2. Interview an immigrant who has been in this country some years without making the major cultural adjustments involved in assimilation, and prepare a written account of the major problems he has experienced.

3. Interview at length an immigrant who has become assimilated, and describe the changes involved in his assimilation.

4. Select a race besides your own with whose members you have had social contacts, and write out a complete account of all your main experiences with them, favorable and unfavorable, in as detailed and natural order as possible.

5. Describe fully a social situation in which the “ natives” have become aware that the immigrant “ invaders ” are showing signs of getting “ out of their place.”

6. Reconstruct the argument advanced by Boas in The Mind of Primitive Man, showing the essential unity of the human mind.

7. In your own language describe at length “ the soul of an immigrant,’ basing your essay on a book by that title, written by Constantine Panunzio.

8. Have you ever been abroad? State exactly the experiences which you had while there that influenced your attitude toward the foreign country or people that you visited.

6 Throughout this report the terms, “race attitudes” and “ racial attitudes,” will be used interchangeably, despite the fact that in some sections of the United States, “race problem” usually refers to the Negro problem, and that “racial problem ” is a broader term.

IMMIGRATION

Assort, Grace, The Immigrant and the Community, Chap. I. Century, 1917.

Bocarpus, E. 8., ‘“‘ The Mexican Immigrant,” Journal of Applied Sociology, Vol. XI, pp. 470-84.

BRECKINRIDGE, 8. P., New Homes for Old, Chap. I. Harper, 1921.

Davis, JEROME, The Russian Immigrant, Chap. III. Macmillan, 1922.

Jenks, J. W., AND Laucx, W. J., The Immigration Problem, Chaps. XIV-XVII. Funk and Wagnalls, 6th edit., 1926. Park, R. E., anp Miter, H. A., Old World Traits Transplanted,

Chaps. I-II. Harper, 1921.

Ravace, M. E., An American in the Making, Part I. Harper, 1917. STEINER, E. A., On the Trail of the Immigrant, Chaps. I-XXI. Revell, 1906.

Chapter II Race Attitudes

An attitude is an established tendency to act with reference to some phase of one’s social or physical environment.? The objects of the environment toward or against which attitudes are expressed become positive or negative values. The connecting link between an attitude and a value is action, and the whole unit — attitude, action, value — is behavior, or a personal behavior pattern.?

Action is not only evidence of an attitude, but apparently is the medium in and through which attitudes develop. In

ATTITUDE

ACTION

ENVIRONMENT,’

actions, and hence in personal experiences, an individual learns to respond dependably with reference to stimuli furnished by environmental “ objects” or “values.” The accompanying diagram illustrates the important rdle of

1 Cf. Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Vol. I, pp. 1-86. University of Chicago Press, 1918.

2 Cf. Bogardus, Emory S., “ Personality and Occupational Attitudes, Sociology and Social Research, Vol. XII, p. 73.

action, and hence of personal experiences in the development of attitudes.

A racial attitude is an established (or acquired) tendency to act in a social situation involving persons of a race different from one’s own. The members of each race possess attitudes, friendly and antipathetic, toward the members of all other races of whom they have ever heard. The field of study is large, but the organized knowledge of it is slight.

Racial antipathies involve unlovely behavior traits. They point to each race at its worst, or to some of the members of each in their unpleasant social contacts. Therefore an account of the behavior traits of any race that incite antipathy toward that race is a most one-sided picture. While these descriptions are not wholly pleasant reading, broad-minded members of the respective races will welcome the opportunity to study their races in the role of inciters of prejudice. No matter how unjust, materials of this character are very real, especially to the persons in whom prejudices have been aroused. Data of this kind imply some of the things that need to be done in order to remove the given races from the antipathy columns.

In the pages which follow, accounts will be given of the data contributed by many different types of Americans from every large section of the United States concerning their antipathies.* Seven hundred persons have given descriptions of their outstanding experiences where race attitudes undergo changes or originate. ‘‘ Outstanding ”’ experiences usually include strong emotional reactions arising from unfavorable contacts, and hence they throw light on race antipathies.

In the main the race reactions revealed by the case studies correlate closely with the reactions secured from 1725 Americans through the “ social-distance recording ” method,

3 Secured by personal interviews (1924-1927) and from letters, using the case-study method.

which will be reported upon after the case-study summary has been presented. Taken together, the two sets of source materials serve as checks upon each other.

The races concerning which the seven hundred Americans most frequently reported unfavorable experiences, and toward which they accordingly expressed antipathetic attitudes, were (arranged alphabetically): Armenians, Chinese, English, French, Germans, Greeks, Hindus, Japanese, Jews, Mexicans, mulattoes, Negroes, and Turks. With three exceptions, these are Asiatic and African races — non- Europeans. The degree to which this list parallels the data given in Table II is a high correlation of the antipathetic reactions disclosed in the two lists.

Strange to say, Americans themselves drew antipathetic expressions. Americans are viewed with marked antipathy by other Americans. The personal experience data give clues. Exploitation of Americans by other Americans is the main charge. The wide range of racial types and behavior standards in this country is another factor. Americans who are “mad for money,” “selfish to the core,” “ get-rich-quick promoters,’ “ bootleggers,” “ law violators,” “jazz crazy,’ are often mistaken for the American type.

Pronounced antipathies are expressed against Armenians on such grounds as lying and unreliability, insolence, “haggling among themselves,” and uncleanliness. Where the American’s antipathetic experiences involve both the Armenian and the Japanese, the former are usually given the less favorable record on the score of greater unreliability and trickiness. Little consideration is given by Americans to the conditions under which Armenians have been forced to live in Turkey, or to the fact that lying and trickiness are necessary survival factors where extortion and massacre have continually threatened. They fail also to take into consideration the fact that, when repressed people are suddenly released under conditions of freedom, they are untrained in making constructive use of that freedom; that the ordinary tendency for any one so situated is to go to the opposite extreme and to abuse privileges; and that the older conditioned reflexes still operate in an immigrant’s dealings with the people of the new environment. Americans react quickly against deceitfulness in the immigrant, which, however, stimulates the latter to renewed deceitfulness.

Antipathy for the Chinese is aroused not only by meeting one or a few representatives of the lower social levels, but also by anti-Chinese propaganda. Both influences are likely to have been present in the American’s earlier years when critical ability was undeveloped, suspicion was rife, and fear rampant. Before even meeting better-class Chinese or hearing one of them speak, Americans have often formulated repulsive pictures. These have become “ set” in definite feeling and emotional patterns. One’s experiences may include a low-class but honest laundryman whose yellow skin is “ unpleasant,’ whose slant eyes bespeak ‘“‘slyness,” and whose conversation with another Chinese is “frightful jabbering.” Worse still, the American may see a Chinese as a “ villain ” in a popular movie — and the damage is done. Later he may meet educated and gentlemanly Chinese, but they seem to belong to a different race from the original image of the Chinese. They are treated as exceptions.

The personal experience data of some Americans reveal strong antipathies for the English. The American who gives expression to this prejudice often confuses certain English travelers possessing “ dudish and snobbish ways” with normal Englishmen. The American is sometimes the victim of anti-English propaganda. He has heard of Englishmen long before he has talked with one, and the hearsay is often unfavorable. The British Redcoat, the haughty English lord, the cocky dude, and the Englishman with superior attitudes toward callow, youthful Americans are factors explanatory of the American’s antipathy. The “ uppishness”’ of certain English travelers, their “ perfectly gha-astly ” accent, the wearing of a monocle, the kid gloves, are factors that do the harm. Thus, a few misrepresentative Englishmen are chiefly accountable for unfavorable attitudes.