Week 11 — Asian American and Pacific Islander Experiences I: Exclusion and Incarceration

Why this matters

A law-office or records clerk reading citizenship papers and a teacher whose roll call spans many languages both meet this week's question of who belonged.

In plain language

This chapter follows Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian immigrants and their American-born children from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to a 1988 law that apologized for a wartime wrong. Congress passed laws of exclusion (laws that barred a group, named by national origin, from entering or from becoming a citizen). The Supreme Court decided who was a citizen by birth and who could become one through naturalization (the legal process by which a person born in another country becomes a citizen). In 1942 a presidential order led to the incarceration (imprisonment in guarded camps) of people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, and decades later came redress (a government's formal act of making amends for a wrong it did). You will learn to read a family's papers beside the dated record and say, in one plain sentence, what they show together.

• Already covered: Week 6's 14th Amendment and Week 2's racial formation.
• This week: exclusion, citizenship by birth and naturalization, Executive Order 9066, redress.
• How they connect: this week's citizenship case turns on the 14th Amendment.
• Where we're going next: Week 12, reopening, movement, and the Pacific.

Focus

How did exclusion and incarceration decide who belonged?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] explain how long exclusion law lasted, 1882 to 1943
• [ ] tell citizenship by birth from naturalization
• [ ] explain Executive Order 9066 as an order, not a law
• [ ] read the E7 excerpt against the dated record

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 11 (about 35–45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Try the practice set (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment, then the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: explain why most people removed under the 1942 order were citizens.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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