Structural Opportunity or Ethnic Advantage? Immigrant Business Development in New York

1989 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Waldinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Small Business ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Development ◽  
Business Activity ◽  
West Indians ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Small Manufacturer

Research on ethnic enterprise emerged in the United States as part of an attempt to explain the historical differences in business activity between blacks and other ethnic groups. In Beyond the Melting Pot, Glazer and Moynihan argued that “the small shopkeeper, small manufacturer, or small entrepreneur of any kind played such an important role in the rise of immigrant groups in America that its absence from the Negro community warrants at least some discussion.”1 Glazer and Moynihan offered some brief, possible explanations, but the first extended treatment came with the publication of Ivan Light's now classic comparison of Blacks, not with Jews, Italians, or Irish, but with immigrants—Japanese, Chinese, West Indians—whose racial characteristics made them equally distinctive; the argument developed an imaginative variant of the Weber thesis, showing that it was ethnic solidarism, not individualism, that gave these immigrants an “elective affinity” with the requirements of small business.

The Scene of Suffering and Misery Is Beyond Description

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-29
Author(s):  
Susan E. Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Buchanan ◽  
The Village

All was not peaceful in Liberia in the months before the Majors and Harlans (the Majors’ former neighbors from Kentucky) arrived. In a flashback, chapter 5 reveals the violence that awaits the new settlers. Port Cresson is a small settlement established by the New York Colonization Society and the Young Men’s Colonization Society of Pennsylvania. The village, near where the Luna will disembark passengers a year later, is attacked by a group of indigenous warriors in June 1835. In a single horrible night, twenty people—three men, four women, and thirteen children—are slaughtered. Survivors flee to nearby Edina. The slave trade, supported by many of the indigenous ethnic groups, is behind the attack. The vice agent of the colony survives the attack, but he and his wife are done with Liberia and promptly sail for America. Thomas Buchanan, a cousin of James Buchanan who would later become president of the United States, replaces Hankinson as agent.

The Comic Grotesque

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-66
Author(s):  
Jean Lee Cole
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Logical Basis ◽  
Ethnic Populations ◽  
The Social

A particularly grotesque form of the comic sensibility emerged in the closing years of the nineteenth century in the works of George Luks. Luks was called on to take over Richard Outcault’s phenomenally popular Yellow Kid comic strip at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1896; he soon made the Yellow Kid his own. As Outcault’s duplicate or twin, Luks capitalized on the grotesque potential of twinning, doubling, and replication to question the social order from below, laying bare—and then savagely mocking—fears of the rapidly growing immigrant and ethnic populations in the United States. In subsequent strips, including The Little Nippers and Mose’s Incubator, his representations of polyglot America become positively fantastical, even monstrous, reflecting the interchangeability and reproducibility of ethnic identity that formed the logical basis of the “melting pot.”

scholarly journals Resisting Assimilation to the Melting Pot:

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Freyca Calderon Berumen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Cultural Curriculum

The melting pot metaphor suggest that people from different backgrounds come to the United States and through the process of assimilation adapt to a new lifestyle integrating smoothly into the dominant culture. This article argues that immigrants from diverse cultural and ethnic groups that try to keep some of their cultural traditions may encounter conflict when trying to adapt to their life in the new context. The author contends for a cultural curriculum of the home endorsing family cultural values and traditions tha is overlooked by schools and educators, disregarding its potential for enhancing children’s learning process and academic achievement.

LINKING BLACKNESS OR ETHNIC OTHERING?

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shayla C. Nunnally
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Racial Socialization ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Indians ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Major Predictor

AbstractDawson (1994) submits Black linked fate is a major predictor of Black political behavior. This theory conjectures that the experiences of African Americans with race and racial discrimination in the United States unify their personal interests under a rubric of interests that are best for the Black racial group. With increasing Black ethnic diversity in the United States, however, it becomes important to ascertain how African Americans perceive linkages across Black ethnic groups. This study examines African Americans' linkages with West Indian and African peoples in the United States, referred to here as diasporic linked fate. The study tests the influence of parent-child, intra-racial socialization messages on these linkages. Results suggest that, while a majority of African Americans acknowledge Black linked fate, they distinguish these linkages based on ethnicity and have more tenuous linkages with West Indians and Africans in the United States. While intra-racial socialization messages offer some import in explaining perceived differences in Black ethnic groups' living experiences, more frequent experiences with racial discrimination, and membership in a Black organization offer more import in explaining diasporic linked fate.

West Indians in New York City and London: A Comparative Analysis

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Foner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Indians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Occupational Background

Census data indicate that West Indians in the United States are occupationally more successful than West Indians in Britain. Three factors may help to explain this situation: the history of West Indian migration to Britain and the United States; the occupational background of the migrants; and the structure of race relations in the two receiving areas. Comparing West Indians’ occupational achievements in the United States and Britain may also help to explain why West Indians in New York are more successful than black Americans.

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