Week 13 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 13 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 40–48 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–22 min total)

① Quotas from an old count

Chapter 13, Section “Read the 1924 quotas and the 1952 law” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The 1924 quotas and the 1952 law” · Remember: the 1924 quotas covered every nationality from an 1890 count, and Asia was excluded on top of them.

Immigration Act of 1924 Analyzed for APUSH — APUSH Simplified — a six-minute walk through the 1924 law that says Congress chose the 1890 census, 34 years before the act, and capped each country at 2 percent of that count; listen for its point that the Western Hemisphere sat outside the quotas, and for its last line that the law was amended in 1952 and replaced in 1965; notice too that it says the 1882 act banned all immigrants from China, where the chapter's record says it suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers. It calls the fear of foreigners xenophobia, the same word the chapter uses. This builds on Week 11's reading of exclusion and the naturalization cases. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) — Immigration History — a historians' society's short teaching page on the law; read how a quota tied to the 1890 census favored the groups already here, how the bar on aliens ineligible for citizenship shut out Asia, and how the Western Hemisphere stayed outside the quotas, then try its discussion questions. Use it while completing the Week-13 module overview. (reading, 4–6 min)

② Two things the 1986 law did

Chapter 13, Section “Read the 1986 law: status and penalties” · Session 1, Segment 4, “The 1986 law” · Remember: the 1986 law offered legal status to people who entered before 1982 and penalized employers who knowingly hired unauthorized workers.

From the archives: Reagan signs 1986 immigration law — CBS News — a network evening-news report from the day the law was signed, filmed in Southern California; listen for both halves of the law, the families who qualify because they arrived before the cutoff and the employers who now face penalties for hiring undocumented workers. It uses the words of its time, illegal aliens and amnesty; the course says undocumented and legal status. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Who is counted, and how

Chapter 13, Section “Count the federal categories in 1977, 1997, and 2024” · Session 2, Segment 7, “The federal categories” · Remember: the federal categories went from 4 race categories to 5 and 2 to 7 minimum categories, and each is the issuing body's category.

Census Race Questions 101 | With Explainer on Proposed Overhaul — Boston Indicators — a research group's nine-minute briefing, recorded while the change was still a proposal, on how the race and Hispanic or Latino questions were asked separately, why that confused researchers, and what a combined question with a Middle Eastern or North African box would change; it also lists downsides, one of which assumes the data should serve affirmative action and repair efforts; people disagree about both, so read that point as the speaker's own view on questions this course names without arguing. Stop here before multiracial identity; next week takes that up. (video, 9 min) (captions: automatic)
US adds census category for Americans of Middle Eastern, North African descent | VOANews — Voice of America — a three-minute report from a neighborhood of Arab-owned shops in Southern California in which residents say how checking White felt and one shopper says the new box divides more than it includes; notice that the report gives both views, and check its forecast about the next census against the issuing body's site. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
2024 SPD 15 — Office of Management and Budget — the issuing body's own page for the 2024 revision; read its list of the seven minimum categories and its statement that the categories are socio-political constructs, not an attempt to define race and ethnicity biologically or genetically, then skip the links to the full notice. (reading, 2–4 min)

④ Nativism, and the communities it named

Chapter 13, Section “Meet Arab American and Middle Eastern and North African experiences” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Arab American and Middle Eastern and North African experiences” · Remember: these communities came from many countries and many faiths, and before 2024 they were counted within White.

Immigration and the Rise of Nativism — NBC News Learn — a two-minute history of nativism in the late nineteenth century, from fears about jobs and wages to religious prejudice, and the organized groups that by the 1920s won a restrictive quota system; set it beside the chapter's definition of nativism as hostility to immigrants in the name of the native-born. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
Arab American National Museum’s David Serio details the history of Arab immigration in Michigan — One Detroit — a public-television segment in which a museum educator traces Arab immigration from the 1880s, mostly Lebanese and Syrian Christians at first, to the auto-factory jobs that drew families to Dearborn, and tells his own family's story; it closes on the museum's oral-history scrapbooks, a good comparison with this course's archive. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)
Core Galleries — Arab American National Museum — the museum's short overview of its permanent galleries, including one on coming to America; read its line that Arab Americans began immigrating in large numbers in the 1880s, mainly for economic reasons, and its definition of Arab Americans by ancestry from the Arab countries. (reading, 2–4 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 — Library of Congress — the Library of Congress's short page on the 1986 law; it gives the law's two parts, legal status for undocumented migrants who had entered before 1982 and penalties for employers who knowingly hired unauthorized workers, and its estimate of about 3 million people legalized, a figure this course teaches in words. Stay inside this week's topic: the law's two parts. (reading, 2–4 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com