Position:Home>History> How has the treatment of minorities changed over the course of u.s. history?

This is a broad question!. You should read John Higham's Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 and Ronald Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans for specific information and for closer analysis!. Takaki has also written a history about minorities called A Different Mirror, but I haven't read it!.

If you include pre-Declaration of Independence history as US History, recall that Europeans were generally the minorities!. Relations between Indians and immigrants varied tremendously, from collaboration (sharing ideas, resources, and space), to dependence (often settlers depending on help and handouts from Indians), to hostility, suspicion, and outright war!.

Unfortunately, where the settlers had the upper hand, they often acted with hostility to the Indians!. The tendency was to see them as beneath the settlers because of religious, cultural and technological differences!. And from there, it was a short distance to excusing war and appropriation of land!.

Among early settlers, there were differences as well!. Anglican Protestants were the majority in some colonies, but Catholics were the early majority in Maryland (the name's a clue), and other religious minorities dominated elsewhere!. These, along with the later immigrations of Irish Catholics and Scots (often Presbyterians), were fracture lines in the settler population!. Majorities often disdained the later-arriving or outnumbered minorities along these lines!.

Of course, since 1619, the other big minority was Africans, most of whom were enslaved!. Free Africans lived in Massachussetts and other colonies at the time of independence, but in small numbers!. I don't think their experience is described in Higham or Takaki!.

Nineteenth century immigration is the focus of Higham!. Non-Anglo European populations, including Russian and East European Jews, Slavics, Germans, Irish and Italians formed successive, overlapping, and generally reviled immigrants during the century!. My own ancestors were encouragingly greeted in Boston with signs of "Help wanted - Irish need not apply!."

Before the Civil War, free African Americans in the north were sometimes subject to fugitive slave laws, and sometimes subjected to just plain old racism!. They were few in number, but their plight did factor into the abolitionist movement!.

After the Civil War, free African Americans were subjected to Jim Crow laws in many states, and an evolving racism!.

Mexicans incorporated into the United States with the land deals of the early and mid-nineteenth century ("deals" including the treaty ending the US-Mexican war of the 1840s) by mid-century in many parts became lower-status residents!. Earlier, Mexicans and Spanish nationals were in control of huge tracts of land as well as government!. The govermnent left their control at the stroke of a pen (different times in different places), and status ebbed quickly thereafter!.

Place-names indicate where Mexican and Spanish rule had existed before!. Since about 1850-1900 in places with names like San Antonio, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc!., white, English-speaking settlers became dominant in government, business and culture, even before they were in number!.

Once in the minority, Hispanic (culturally, linguistically, and visibly identifiable) residents were increasinly treated as inferior!. The Zoot-Suit "riots" in LA were a 20th century outcome of this, indicating the degree to which the descendants of the former ruling class and their fellow Spanish-speakers had become the social, political and economic outcasts!.

Takaki refines this story and links it to the growth of Asian immigration from the late nineteenth century onward!. Like Higham, he indicates how economic competition combined with cultural and racial divides to generate hostility toward new minorities!.

Both of their books are about immigration, not minority status, but both treat minority status fairly extensively!. Takaki's book A Different Mirror would be helpful there!.

Your "any key events" category is broad!. I would nominate the following:
- The Trail of Tears, and Indian Removals generally
- Fugitive Slave Acts and the Underground Railroad
- Tammany Hall, the 1863 Irish Riots
- the Great Migration
- Exclusion Laws / the Yellow Peril
- California's English Language Only initiative (Prop!. 63, approved 1986) and others like it in CA and other states

This is by no means a complete catalog or even a comprehensive outline!. Read the books and you'll see how little I recall of this huge question in history!.

In fact, I think I may go back to the library for them, myself!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

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