AMCULT 215 EXAM #1

American

• Shorthand for citizen of the USA

• Broad, general reference to two continents

• Cultural (but not ethnic or racial)

Arab

• “Arab” is an ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity

• In the US context, “Arab” is not a racial category, but it is a racialized category

Colonialism

• needs imperialism

• colonialism is a more centralized, local takeover and upheaval of economic systems and land

• “So far, we have defined colonialism as the forcible takeover of land and economy, and, in the case of European colonialism, a restructuring of non-capitalist economies in order to fuel European capitalism”

First wave of immigration

Suleiman’s Characteristics of the First Wave:

• Estimated 130,000 Syrian immigrants by 1930s

• Estimated 350,000 Syrian immigrants by WW2

• Little formal education, often poor, and illiterate.

• Predominantly Christian.

• Considered themselves “sojourners” (temporary) Oops, Ottoman Empire collapses.

• Predominantly from the province of Greater Syria.

• “The American Dream”

(1870s-WW2) Arabic-speaking immigrants are referred to as “syrians” because they are from the ottoman controlled region called greater syria

Why?:

• Economic:

• Suez Canal, 1869

• Phylloxera (grape leaf aphid) outbreak, 1890s

• Cultural:

• “The American Dream”

• The Christian Persecution Thesis, 1860s (contradicts the sojourner thesis)

Hegemony

• Something that is (& the elites want to remain) dominant in society.

• A process that makes the dominance of one person/group/idea seem normal or natural.

• “Soft power.”

• Hegemony is maintained through coercion & consent.

Heteronormativity

• “Compulsory heterosexuality.”

• Sex/Gender binary and traditional gender roles

• Insistence that heterosexuality is and must remain the norm

• Heterosexual relationships and nuclear family are considered superior (i.e. heterosexual supremacy)

• Patriarchal (i.e. Men and masculinity are privileged. Society is organized and controlled by men. Women, children, and anyone considered gender or sexually deviant from the norm are subordinate or even considered dangerous.

Imperialism

• a global network of colonies spanning a large amount of distance

• imperialism is global, colonialism is local

• “ imperialism is defined as a political system in which an imperial centre governs colonized countries,

• you can have imperialism without colonialism, but not vice versa

The johnson-reed act of 1924

a restrictive series of immigration laws

syrian immigration under this quota system was restricted to 100 annually”

• Ended the wave, slowing down the rapid immigration

• Led to the modern immigration laws

Eugenics - desire to breed for a “pure race” (white, able-bodied)

Nativism

Little Syria

• Neighborhood in NYC

• Major origin point for east-coast Syrian immigrant history

• Arabic-language intellectual community

• Many of the population of little Syria dispersed around other areas of nyc (brooklyn)

• Luxury construction after 9/11 that further destroy land and make it hard for working class people to afford living in the area

Naturalization Act of 1790

• A law constricting citizenship to a select few through conditional requirements, that is, “free white persons” and “of good character”. Established a racial prerequisite of sorts to acquire citizenship

• A law that allowed only “free white people” to become U.S. citizens. This is relevant to Syrians because they had to prove that they were legally “white” to gain citizenship.

Orientalism

• Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 3).

• As an ideology, Orientalism produces representations as a method of power and control.

• “an imaginative geography” that demarcates and distinguishes between ”the Occident” or “the West” (North America) and “the Orient” or “the East”

Origins in the field (get from flashcard)

• 3 obstacles to formation: struggles to render the field legible, resistance to framing Arab Americans as racialized, and a general climate of censorship around work on palestine and arabs more generally

• a field that grew from scholars and activists working to document arab american experiences, challenge stereotypes and racialization, and gain recognition in academia.

peddling

• Selling cheap household goods door to door all throughout the US to earn livings 

• The Greater Syrian immigrants participated in peddling. 

• The peddled going from Eastern US to Western US.

  • Urban + Rural areas

• Around 1890’s to the following 10-15 years 

• There were main networks of Syrian migrant families closer to the east, and as they proliferated towards the west, they created more and more “subnetworks/settlements” (usually composed of immigrants that hailed from a singular original settlement). From these subnetworks, they continued to spread towards the west with their peddling activities. 

• Suppliers, relatives, villagers, and religious communities helped new peddlers get goods, housing, and selling routes.

Peddling Thesis

• Alixa Naff created the peddling thesis in 1985, it was an argument that said peddling was the main economic source and cause for more assimilation for early Arab- Americans.

• The limitations of the theory itself were that some people thought it was overemphasized on peddling being the main immigrant occupation, they also worked in things like factories. There was an oversimplification of peddling being the method of assimilation. People also argued more went into americanization such as race and gender.  

Queer Ecology of Peddling

Charlotte Karem Albrecht developed the queer ecology of peddling. 

• Fear of people being away from their families, leading to the opportunity and opening of what was defined as “queerness”

• Two men or two women being together at the same time and sleeping in the same barn, etc.

• The Peddling Thesis said that Peddling helped Syrians assimilate into society, but Albrecht offers an edit, arguing that stopping peddling increased acceptance into American society.

Race

 “Race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi+Winant)

Racialization

 “The extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group” (Omi+Winant)

SWANA

Southwest Asian and Northern Africa. Used in this class because it is not orientalist or colonial language.

Syrian

• First wave Arab immigrants from the greater syria region

• Classified as Syrian because much of their identity was tied to local domains (villages) instead of a larger country, and so when they came to the borders there was a lot of confusion of where they came from

• Border patrol just referred to these Arab migrants as Syrians. 

• from the formerly ottoman controlled region called greater syria

The wave models

• The wave model thus suggests that Arab Americans would ultimately be spared some of the severe consequences of racial othering. 

• two waves: pre– and post–World War II (Suleiman 1999); 

• three waves: pre–World War II, post–World War II through 1965, and post-1965 (Fadda 2014; Orfalea 1988);

• four waves: the three waves plus a post-1990 wave (Arab American National Museum 2019). 

• Wave model plays in to nativist fears of hordes of immigrants 

critiques of the wave models

• The wave model of migration collapses all of these newcomers under the rubric of post-1965 immigrants, overlooking the substantial differences among and between them.

Common sense (knowledge of race)

• how the average person understood race

• Syrians (according to common sense): white in legal documents, non-white socially

congressional intent

"this is what the founding fathers wanted!!"
- interprets whiteness based in the 1790 Naturalization Act which stipulates racial pre reqs for citizenship ("free white persons")

George Dow

• 1915

• Scientific evidence and congressional intent were prominently debated in the case

• Didn’t speak english or know much about the US

• granted citizenship and upheld Syrian whiteness

racial formation

• Helps us understand how racial categories come to have certain meanings

• “The process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings”

• how racial projects help or disenfranchise certain groups

racial project

• “A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to re-organize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines” (Omi and Winant)

• The concept of racial projects explains the mechanisms through which the US domestic project of white supremacy subordinated historic minorities (African Americans, etc.) for the purposes of land confiscation, econ exploitation, and white capital accumulation

racism

• “the state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death”

Nola and Fannie (Hasna) Romey

• Nola was arrested for selling produce in the street, during the physical altercation Hasna shot the police chief, thinking they had killed Nola. The other police officers then shot and killed her. Nola was lynched by the KKK after they raided the jail he was taken to.

• the idealogical reason they were killed were because the police wouldn’t accept the humiliation of being treated like second-class citizens, which was how they felt when Nola and Hasna acted as their peers

• in addition, Hasna and the police chief had a previous argument, in which she called him out and he felt emasculated and had resent for her.

“scientific” evidence

eugenics (racial science), geography, & religion. not real science

sexuality (as it pertains to race)

• Ideas about race, gender, and sexuality change depending on the context (social or political conflicts)

George Shisham

• 1909

• Arrests son of prominent (white) lawyer in Santa Monica, CA

• In defense, son and lawyer say that Shishim couldn’t arrest him because he wasn’t a citizen or white 

• judge ruled in shisham’s favor, upholding the idea that arab immigrants were white, and therefore eligible for citizenship

Costa Najour (come back)

• 1909

• ruling in Najour's favor distinguished between color and race; the caucasity of Najour (the judge ruled using scientific evidence: proximity to Caucasus region. implemented the collapse of "white" and "citizen")

• Judge Newman’s decision in the Najour case helped alter the discourse on racial classification by distinguishing between skin color and race

charlotte karem albrecht (come back)

• what we read: thesis on peddling

• when: 2023

Ania Loomba (come back)

what we read: “colonialism/postcolonialism

when: 1998

gaultieri (come back)

what we read: claiming whiteness and strange fruit (2009, 2008)