Ethnic Studies: Race, Migration, and SWANA History

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts, historical legislation, and analytical frameworks in Ethnic Studies, race, and SWANA migration.

American

A citizen of the USA; a cultural but not racial identity.

Arab

An ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity, rather than a faith-based identity; in the USA, it functions as a racialized category.

Colonialism

The conquest and control of other people's land and goods.

First wave of immigration

A period of immigration spanning the 1870s to WW2, consisting mostly of Arabic-speaking Christians.

Hegemony

Power achieved through a combination of coercion and consent.

Heteronormativity

The standard or ideal version of a family in the United States, involving a woman, a man, and kids, and believing in the gender binary.

Imperialism

A broader policy of extending a nation's power and influence, often without settlement.

Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924

An act establishing strict national origins quotas and banning Asian immigration to preserve the perceived homogeneity of the American population.

Little Syria

A small Arab community formerly located in Manhattan, New York, that no longer exists due to rising costs and city developments.

Naturalization Act of 1790

Legislation that created a racial prerequisite for citizenship, limiting naturalization to a free white person with good behavior.

Orientalism

A Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.

Origins of the field

The progression from 1960s social movements to student protests demanding university representation, including the 1969 TWLF strike at Berkeley demanding a Third World College, which led to the creation of UC Berkeley's Ethnic Studies department and the expansion of ethnic and area studies.

Peddling

The practice of immigrants, specifically Arabs, going from area to area selling goods from their backpacks.

The Peddling Thesis

The idea that peddling was the key to assimilation and Americanisation.

Queer ecology of peddling

The perception that peddling was queer because it was odd to American culture and tied to white masculinity, featuring men and women working against normal families.

Race

A concept that signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests referring to types of human bodies.

Racialization

The extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group.

SWANA

A non-Eurocentric name for the Middle East, standing for Southwest Asia and North Africa.

Syrian

Arabic-speaking immigrants from the first wave who were generally Christians.

The Wave Models (and critiques of)

A reductionist framework defining four waves to organize periods of immigration from the SWANA region into the United States, criticized for leaving out the fact that many people immigrate at different times.

Common sense (knowledge of race)

How the average person understood race.

Racial formation

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.

Racial project

Simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to re-organize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines.

Racism

The state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.

Gender

A social construct, expression, identity, sense of self, role, script, and performance.

Sexuality

Orientation, desire, social practices, and identity.