Sowell's Ethnic America: Conclusion

After telling the stories of Ethnic America, from Irish to Germans to Jews to Italians to Chinese to Japanese to Blacks to Puerto Ricans to Mexicans, Thomas Sowell has a conclusion or two.

He starts by reminding us that "factors that advance or retard the progress of groups" are not necessarily moral or immoral. We are born into a group, for good and ill, and its culture may make things easier for us, or not.

It is... simply good fortune to be born into a group whose values and skills make life easier to cope with.

And it is equally important to understand what skills help, and why.

Is wealth important? But Eastern European Jews arrived with nothing, and are now in 1980 the highest income group.

Does politics help? But the Chinese and the Japanese avoided politics and now have higher incomes that average whites.

The open frontier? But the Scotch Irish were on the frontier and didn't do too well.

Education? But Jews, Chinese and Japanese rose by hard work before they got education.

But there are patterns and conclusions we can draw from the American ethnic experience.

Patterns

All ethnic groups have risen and thrived in the United States. But all of them have faced obstacles and suffering on their ascent -- that were less than what they experienced before coming. Even the African slaves in the US did better than Africans sold to the Arabs.

It makes a difference whether migrants came here as "sojourners" -- trying things out -- or as committed migrants. It matters whether people came here when convenient, such as Scandinavians and Germans, or as refugees like the Irish and the Jews. Or as captives, as African slaves or indentured servants.

What we call "white flight" is not new. When the Irish flooded into Boston and New York slums, the existing residents got out. The first blacks in Harlem were fleeing tough Irish neighborhoods in midtown Manhattan.

Strikebreakers? First it was the Irish, then Italians and Negroes were used against the Irish.

Education? Jews were passionate about education; Southern Italians were hostile to education.

Family? Both Jews and Italians had strong families, but Jewish families pushed their children towards upward mobility, while Italians felt they betrayed their family by moving into a wider world.

IQ? Lots of immigrants scored low -- even Jewish soldiers in World War I! -- but improved their standings with time and education.

Culture

National recovery after the devastation of war -- such as the Germans after World War II -- reminds us that "human capital" is more important than physical capital. Migrants can come to the US destitute and rise by effort and thrift despite impediments like racial prejudice.

Police brutality? The Jewish Daily Forward reported in 1907 that "the police in the Jewish quarter of New York are the most savage in America."

Inequality? Immigrants often start way "below the level of existing members of their own ethnic group in the country, but eventually rise to not only equal but surpass them." Often it takes fifteen to twenty years. This suggests that 

migration is a selective process, bringing the more ambitious or venturesome or able elements of a population.

And culture matters. 

Groups today plagued by absenteeism, tardiness, and a need for constant supervision... are typically descendants of people with the same habits a century or more ago.

And businesses formed by the followers of Father Divine of the Black Muslims typically do better than the "government-sponsored 'black capitalism' programs of the 1960s and 1970s."

And acculturation is a two-way process. Anglo-Saxon Puritans were overwhelmed "by the German easygoing attitude of good clean fun." American popular music owes everything to black jazz and blues. American political machines were invented by the Irish. Nothing is more American than hamburgers, frankfurters, pizza and tacos.

The "melting pot" is now disdained, but is working better than ever before. It is after people are assimilated that they begin to intermarry. 

While the public square debates the differences and conflicts between groups, there is also the question of intragroup differences, sometimes generational, sometimes differences in acculturation and affluence. And intergroup conflict is often between similar groups, such as blacks and Irish.

Discrimination is a big question in our time, meaning everything from underpaying individuals to actual barriers inhibiting the development of individuals. But employer discrimination cannot explain income differences between, say Hong Kong Chinese and native-born Chinese Americans. Nor can the average employer distinguish between "free persons of color" and other blacks. And overt economic discrimination can be costly to "profit-seeking competitive firms" although less so for government, monopolies and the non profit sector. It is perhaps the most talented and the most brilliant -- the W.E.B. Du Bois or the Paul Robeson -- that suffers most from discrimination, and is most enraged by it.

The fact is that ethnic identity is a complex question. Some people wear it as a badge of honor; others are embarrassed by it. But, writes Sowell,

It cannot be a simple morality play. It is a story of similar patterns and profound differences, of pain and pride and achievement. It is, in one sense, the story of many different heritages. In another sense, it is the story of the human spirit in his many guises.

Yes, What Should We Reform?

The Zman is complaining today that back in the 1970s and 1980s our rulers more or less came together to do some reform.

[In] the 1970’s, before Reagan was a realistic option, a consensus was forming among the various elites of society around important reforms.

Mind, you, they still didn't like Reagan. Nevertheless they did do deregulation, as in airlines. And they did decide to fight inflation with Paul Volcker. 

But, when Reagan proposed a balanced spending and revenue cut, the Dems balked. And even though Bill Clinton promised to be a New Democrat the first thing he did was try to push through a government takeover of health care. But, the Zman points out, nobody actually voted for tax reform or regulatory reform. It was an elite thing.

But now? Wall Street seems to be packing the suitcase and heading for the border; business is currying favor with China and India; the military-industrial complex is just trying to stay alive; the political class? Nothing but old men trying to beat back the radicals, populist and woke.

And yet Joel Kotkin can write about how the Dems are a dumpster fire that is blazing higher and higher with nobody calling the fire brigade. What is going on?

Yes, what is going on?

Know what I think? I don't think things have got bad enough yet for conventional wisdom in the elite to move. I'm reading a history of the US occupation of Germany after WWII, and you know what? It was a dumpster fire. Everything we complain about now was going on then: Congress just posturing; various departments unable to decide on anything. President flapping to and fro without really engaging with the issues.

So if we assume that government is always incompetent and quarreling over silly issues, and just shoveling goodies to the supporters as usual, then, obviously, it  does nothing until things are really starting to get out of hand. And getting out of hand they were in the late 1970s.

And it was only when things were really getting out of hand that a Reagan or a Thatcher could get elected.

Know what I think? I think that the Trump win in 2016 was a bit of a fluke. The people got to elect their guy without the permission of the elite. And things were not yet in the dumpster.

The elite could get together and dump Trump in 2020 because it wasn't yet obvious that the elite had totally screwed up. We weren't to the point where the elite was saying to itself: wow, we better get our house in order or we might get voted outta here.

But it could be that by November 2022 and especially 2024 the elite is going to find itself really under the gun, and decide to forget its silly conceits like climate change and systemic racism and wokism, and coalesce around a sensible reform agenda.

But what reform agenda? OK let's do an exercise: a serious reform agenda and a possible reform agenda.

Serious Reform Agenda

1. Convert gubmint pension programs to universal Fidelity/Vanguard accounts.
2. Decredentialize and decentralize and deregulate health care.
3. Move mortgage financing to eventual max50 percent down
4. Make all post-elementary school education into employer-financed apprenticeships.
5. End child labor laws.
6. Hand welfare system over to tech billionaires.
7. Put Big Tech censors in jail.
8. End vote-by-mail.

Yeah, I know. It's craazy.

Possible Reform Agenda

1. Allow people to opt-out of employee side of FICA tax.
2. Mildly deregulate health care
3. Max 75 percent mortgages plus subsidized "down payment" accounts for first-time buyers.
4. Expand education vouchers
5. Tax breaks for social media that doesn't censor.
6. Voter ID.

Now, when you look at my Possible Reform Agenda it doesn't seem too wacko or way out. No like my wacko Serious Reform Agenda that would represent Real Change. It's the sort of agenda that responsible and moderate leaders could get behind without worrying too much about appearing too extreme.

So we really aren't as far away from a decent reform agenda. We just need things to get a bit worse first.

Sowell's Ethnic America: Puerto Ricans and Mexicans

After learning about the Chinese and the Japanese from Thomas Sowell in Ethnic America, it's time for the Puerto Ricans and Mexicans.

The Puerto Ricans

Puerto Rico became part of the US in 1898 as a result of the Spanish American War, but its culture reflects "nearly four centuries of Spanish rule." There were 40,000 people there before Columbus discovered it, but most died of disease and in rebellions. What with import of slaves and Spanish and population explosion, the population was about one million in 1900.

Puerto Ricans didn't start migrating to the US in significant numbers until after World War II, and the migration has been notably two-way, with people maintaining contact with the folks back home. By 1970 the Puerto Rican population in the US was 1.5 million, half of the population back home. Most Puerto Ricans live in New York City.

In 1900 Puerto Ricans "worked in agriculture under primitive conditions. Illiteracy was 83 percent in 1898 and still 31 percent in 1940. They learned little English, and the Catholic priests were mostly Spanish. The family was important but broke up frequently. Female chastity was protected and young men had a machismo culture.

As an agricultural people Puerto Ricans were not big on education, and 70 percent of households speak Spanish. Children have not done well in school and "bilingual" teaching has not seemed to help. Puerto Ricans "have had high rates of crime, violence and dependence on relief." In 1969 "almost 80 percent of Puerto Rican men were either blue-collar... or service workers... and 60 percent of women." Incomes are lower than other groups because Puerto Ricans work less.

Although Puerto Ricans are eligible to vote, most do not do so, but when they vote, it is overwhelmingly Democrat. They mostly arrived in the US after the construction of the welfare state. As a result they have not built their own grass-roots organizations like the NAACP or B'nai B'rith. In some ways things have been easier for them, but it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. But the race wars have pitted Puerto Ricans against other ethnic groups. Minimum-wage laws and occupational licensing laws make it difficult for Puerto Ricans to get started.

Although Puerto Rican progress does not seem great, the bulk of the population is still the first generation of immigrants, where the young lack experience and the old lack education.

The Mexicans

Mexican Americans are both the oldest and the youngest of Americans. There were settlements of people from Mexico in the southwest long before Americans arrived. But most Mexican Americans arrived in the 20th century and especially after World War II.

The term Mexican American covers a variety of peoples, including the descendants of the original Mexican settlers in the southwest, illegal aliens from Mexico, legal migrants from Mexico, legal transients, and naturalized Americans. Altogether, about 5 million in 1980, according to the US Census, but probably 8 million. About 4 million live in five southwestern states, half of that in California where Mexican American well outnumber the black population. Racially and culturally they are both Spanish and Indian in various degrees.

Before Mexico there were the Aztecs, of human sacrifice fame. But when Cortez arrived the emperor Montezuma showered him with gifts, including gold. So the Spaniards had to conquer them. They were assisted by Indian tribes and by European diseases. Right from the beginning, Spanish soldiers began sexual liaisons with native women, and by 1800 the mestizos outnumbered the Spanish-born and the Negro slaves.

From Mexico the new rulers spread northwards into the American southwest. Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1821; they allowed US citizens to settle in their northwest. But as the number of Americans swelled they wanted independence from Mexico: thus a Texas war of independence and US troops capturing Mexico City in 1847. Territory acquired from Mexico included what is now California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. So the Mexicans in the US southwest became a minority and tended to lose their land from fraud, corrupt officials, and violence. The multicolored masses were "rigidly excluded from social and political participation."

But railroads, the Mexican revolution of 1909 -- one million killed -- and the rapid development of the US attracted Mexicans to the southwest where they could make double or triple the wage back home. As with the Italian padrone system, US employers employed Mexicans in gangs through a "coyote" labor contractor. This lasted until Mexicans learned the language and the country of the United States. As with other ethnic groups the whiter and more acculturated Mexicans were accepted into mainstream society but the new migrants were shunned and exploited.

In the Great Depression, migration stopped and a massive program of deportation was begun. The Mexican population of the United States declined from 600,000 in 1930 to 400,000 in 1940. But in World War II there was a sudden demand for labor and the bracero program of contract laborers began in 1942, starting at 50,000 per year and ended at 400,000 per year in the late 1950s. The program was terminated in 1964. But there were other forms of admission, including illegal immigration. There was also a program of expulsions: 0.5 million in 1951, one million in 1954.

The expulsion drive did not last long. 440,000 immigrated legally in the 1960s, and  small border force was not able to stem the flood of illegal immigrants. Meanwhile social agencies and civil rights organizations intervened in deportation cases and raised the cost of deportation. And the Mexican government did nothing to discourage Mexicans from migrating to the US; it has regarded enforcement of the border as an American problem.

The three great waves of Mexican immigration -- pre World War I, post World War II, and post-1960s -- mean that Mexican Americans differ in the length of time their families have been in the US. Today Mexican Americans are more urbanized than Americans in general, but they have been urbanized for a shorter time than most Americans. Half the high-income Mexican Americans in Los Angeles live in predominantly white areas, and half their daughters marry outside the Mexican American groups. Less than 10 percent of high-income Mexican-American family heads were born in Mexico.

Over the years Mexican-American incomes have risen, absolutely, and relative to other Americans. 

In 1949, the personal income of Mexican-Americans was 57 percent of that of non-Hispanic whites in the southwest... By 1971 they earned 73 percent of the US average.

But meaningful comparisons are difficult because Mexican Americans are younger than average Americans, and have larger families, and have fewer people working per family. Labor-force participation among women is less, and unemployment among Mexican-American men is about double that of black men and triple that of white men. And in addition, substantial numbers of Mexican-Americans are illegal aliens.

The family is central to Mexican-American culture. Female chastity is important, and leads to early marriage and low college attendance. And family breakups are much less common. Divorce is less than white and less than half that of blacks and Puerto Ricans. Family size is larger, but goes down with increased education.

About half of Mexican-American families speak Spanish at home, and this affects educational achievement. But their values have never centered on education.

In politics Mexican-Americans have not shown much interest, and not too many have, by 1980, risen to political prominence.

Still, Mexican-Americans hold their own with other ethnic groups. In 1979 family income was 18 percent higher than blacks and 54 percent higher than Puerto Ricans, and 73 percent of the national average. 

Next: Conclusion.

Sowell's Ethnic America: Blacks

After learning about the Chinese and the Japanese from Thomas Sowell in Ethnic America, it's time for the Blacks.

The Blacks

Black Americans are unique in that the vast majority came to America against their will, as slaves, and two centuries of slavery served to separate them from their ancestral culture, making them "a cultural and biological product of the New World rather than Africa." And their history is complicated by emancipation followed by Jim Crow and involved several massive internal migrations. Thus "many blacks are only in their second generation in the urban world... about where the Irish were a century ago."

However all blacks are not alike. Although most American Negroes were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, there were already about half a million "free persons of color" that were emancipated earlier. And there are immigrants from the West Indies.

It was the Arabs that began the massive trade in African slaves after their conquest of northern Africa in the eighth centuries. Some of these slaves were introduced into Spain and Portugal, so that when the Spanish started to colonize the New World they brought along African slaves to do the heavy work. In the mid 17th century 10,000 slaves a year were shipped across the Atlantic, reaching a peak of 60,000 a year in the eighteenth century, totaling more than 10 million over the centuries. About 400,000 were shipped to the American colonies, beginning in 1619, when Africans landed in Virginia were made into indentured servants and subsequently freed. Slavery appeared as "a perpetual condition" in Virginia in 1661.

Preventing escape is a central requirement of a slave system and this was achieved by making the slaves ignorant and dependent. It was easy to escape, but not easy to escape the white patrols. The dependency imperative created cultures of "foot-dragging, work-evading patterns that were to remain as a cultural legacy" long after the end of slavery.

But the slaves developed a unique, self-reinforcing culture. "Racial solidarity was basic and betrayal to whites unforgivable." Thus a violation of solidarity meant pariah status and "personal devastation." The most important relationship was the family. Slave marriages -- without legal standing -- "usually lasted for decades, if not for a lifetime." And slaves maintained their surnames, secretly, down the generations. Although slave owners could separate slave couples, they avoided it, because "the remaining partner might try to escape." However, owners were uncertain about slave marriages. They wanted to avoid fights over women, yet regarded slave families as inappropriate to slave status.

Slave labor is most suitable for "crops requiring routine, mass-production labor" easily monitored by overseers. With the invention of the cotton gin, this meant expansion of slave labor in the Deep South with its suitable soil and climate, and an associated forced migration of slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South.

Opposition to slavery took many forms, ranging from the desire to avoid the problems of living in a society with a "racially distinct people held in bondage" to rabid defense of slavery and notions that the slaves were inferior "and lacked the feelings that would cause them suffering" from their bondage. And what would happen if the slaves were freed? 

Division between North and South heightened after the Revolution. Northern states avoided the problem by announcing a future ban on slavery, which sent all the slaves to the South. Meanwhile the South doubled down on its support of slavery, with "black codes" and censorship. Opponents of slavery migrated out of the South.

During the Civil War, relations between black and white were ambiguous. Some slaves escaped to fight for the North; one slave carried his wounded master off the battlefield and then escaped to join the Union Army. Whites were also ambivalent, praising and damning blacks.

And after the War, white resentment of blacks was widespread. Yet both whites and blacks had their lives utterly disrupted.

The position of newly freed blacks was made precarious by the undependable protection of the Union Army and the rampant terrorism of white mobs and vigilantes.

And that only got worse after the end of Reconstruction.

After the War, most blacks continued as agricultural laborers and a large minority worked as domestic servants. A major problem was lack of experience in budgeting or managing day-to-day life. Thus blacks worked in ways that were hardly different from slavery. Only as they acquired the skills and culture and education of free men did they begin to rise: from slaves to share-croppers to tenant farmers. And when there was competition for labor, incomes grew.

Politically, black participation was held back by Jim Crow laws, segregation, and lynching.

Under slavery, education for blacks was forbidden, and this was tightened after the Nat Turner insurrection of 1831 in Virginia. But after the War blacks, children and adults, flocked to education when they could find it. Various agencies, from the Freedman's Bureau to missionary associations, tried to help. And blacks went from nearly zero to 75 percent literacy in the fifty years after emancipation. But public education was slow to open up to blacks, and the new black colleges taught pre-college material for many years.

Black leadership was divided between former slaves like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington that pushed for raising up the masses and free-born W.E.B. Du Bois who advocated for the "talented tenth."

Migration of blacks towards the North began before the Civil War; thus antebellum "free persons of color" were more urbanizes than whites. Meanwhile black slaves were being moved southwestwards. Migration to the cities after the War began modestly, but ramped up in the 1880s and thereafter, with 0.75 million leaving the South in the 1920s. Reasons for the exodus included worsening race relations, the boll weevil, and demand for labor in World War I. By the end of the 19th century blacks were integrating fairly well into northern cities, sometimes earning more than Irish and Italian immigrants, and residential segregation into black ghettos was not a thing.

But acceptance of blacks in northern cities went down in the early 20th century.

The masses of unacculturated, ill-educated, rural southern Negroes who flooded into the northern cities were bitterly resented by blacks and whites alike.

And so barriers were raised against all blacks and some northern cities passed residential segregation laws.

Migration paused in the Great Depression of the 1930s but resumed in the 1940s. Over 4 million blacks migrated from the South between 1940 and 1970, a major population migration. It was a "mass uprooting from a rural southern way of life," the sort that takes generations to adjust to. Normal social pathology appeared -- violence, alchoholism, crime, delinquency -- and whites and the black middle class moved away from the new migrants, if they could. Most of the migrants were male, unmarried and unskilled. As late as 1925 72 percent of black males in New York were either unskilled laborers or service workers; the bulk of black women were domestic servants. But black family life typically featured two-parent households, with 80 percent headed by the father. "The unwed teenage mother emerged in a later era."

Literacy improved, but slowly. In 1900, about half of the black population was illiterate; by 1920 it was down to less than a quarter. In 1930 blacks averaged six years of schooling compared to ten for whites. As late as 1930 only 14 percent of black children in the South reached high school. But a few high-quality black high schools delivered a cohort that in later years were graduating from Ivy League colleges. And the new black masses in the cities developed a new cultural style, and their music developed into modern jazz.

The slow rise created a new black middle class that "displaced or merged with the old [black] elite in many northern cities." And some blacks made substantial fortunes.

Blacks from the West Indies started immigrating in the early 20th century. About 1 percent of the black population, they are overrepresented as professionals and public figures, and have not intermarried much with native US blacks. Although West Indian black slaves were treated worse than US slaves they grew and prepared their own food and sold surplus food in markets, giving them experience in running their lives and in buying and selling. They were emancipated in 1838 but were given a period of preparation for freedom, unlike the overnight emancipation in the US. Many West Indian blacks have risen to leadership positions in the black community.

President Truman made "civil rights" a major part of his platform in 1948, splitting his party and losing the South. But he started a process, with court decisions striking down discriminatory laws and practices. But black improvements in incomes, occupations, and education have not eliminated "gaps" as other groups have also improved their lot. Still, in the 1960s black income and college enrollment rose faster than white. The number of blacks in elective politics soared, quadrupling in state legislatures in the South. Overall black progress appears less than expected because half of American Negroes live in the South where incomes and living costs are lower.

Blacks have experienced retrogression in the proportion of one-parent families; the proportion of blacks on welfare has increased, and the proportion of blacks in work has declined absolutely and proportionately to whites. Government has attempted to advance blacks with "'affirmative action' or racial quota hiring" but economists believe these efforts have "little or no effect." These policies have "engendered strong resentment among whites in general."

Prominent blacks are disproportionately descended from black elite families and West Indians: Thurgood Marshall, Andrew Young, Roy Innes, Shirley Chisholm.

Blacks have progressed from a "position of utter destitution... to a place alongside other groups emerging the in the great struggles of life. None have to to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans."

Next: Latin Americans

Sowell's Ethnic America: Chinese, Japanese

After learning about the European immigrants from Thomas Sowell in Ethnic America, it's time for the East Asians.

The Chinese

Chinese people started migrating away from China during the decline of the Ming dynasty. Migration to the US started with the discovery of gold in 1849. But nearly all the migrants were from one province, Kwantung, and even one area, Toishan. The immigrants worked as contract laborers in agriculture, railroad building, and worked in gangs under the supervision of a fellow Chinese. But they worked so hard, and for so little wages, that they provoked the fear and hatred of white workers. As in attacks and murders. 

Things got so bad that the US passed a Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. This created great hardship for the mostly single male workers, because they could not bring wives over -- especially given how family-centric Chinese culture is. There were special fees and taxes placed upon Chinese businesses like laundries. Because of these impositions, the Chinese kept themselves apart in "Chinatowns" and did not use the legal system to resolve disputes. So local Chinese leaders and the secret society "tongs" kept the peace.

The Chinatowns became notorious as centers of vice: prostitution, drugs, and gambling, and that attracted white "ruffians and hoodlums." But eventually they developed into tourist attractions and needed to keep the vice down to a dull roar.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was not relaxed until 1945, when a predominantly female immigration allowed husbands and wives to be reunited and provide partners to a predominantly male community. Many of the new wives were selected by matchmakers.

Although the economic rise of Chinese Americans was mostly in Chinatown business -- financed by Chinese credit associations -- by World War II there was a labor shortage and Chinese were able to move into the general economy. It didn't hurt that Americans felt sorry for China being invaded by Japan.

In education, Chinese American children did well, whether in segregated schools or not. And the Chinese sent their children to college, so the Chinese moved into the professions. By 1959 the average income of Chinese Americans was above that of other Americans.

After the Maoist revolution, the Toishan Chinese in America were invaded by refugees from Communism that came through Hong Kong. They did not speak the Chinese dialect spoken by the Toishaners, but neither did they speak much English. On the other hand the new immigrants had been partially westernized in Hong Kong and did not have the strict family culture of the Toishaners. Conflict ensued.

Today Chinese Americans have higher incomes than the average and "higher occupational status." A quarter of Chinese Americans work in "scientific and professional fields." But mostly their prosperity issues from the fact that Chinese Americans work more than the average American.

The Japanese

Migration from Japan to the US began after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, in a culture that admired the US. The first migrants were contract laborers to Hawaii and did not work out. But later migrants, as sugarcane workers in Hawaii and mainland US laborers "on railroad and in mines, lumber mills, canneries, meat-packing plants," were so efficient that they were "feared and hated by American workers and American labor unions." As they moved up from agricultural laborers to tenant farmers they provoked hostility from white farmers. Thus the Alien Land Law of 1913 that forbade California land ownership by aliens -- Asians in general and Japanese in particular.

But, because of the rise of Japan, there was no Exclusion Act. Only the "Gentlemen's Agreement of 1908."

Under the terms of this agreement, Japan itself severely limited the number of immigrants to the United States, and the American government allowed the wives of of existing Japanese in the United States to join their husbands and for parents and children to be reunited here. 

Thus the extreme sex imbalance of Chinese immigrants was avoided. And the immigrants and their children became Japanese Americans.

The first generation of immigrants, the Issei, had been selected by the Japanese government "for their health, character, and willingness to work." They were predisposed to "accept and emulate the American way of life."

The second generation, the Nisei, were significantly different. They spoke English, and very little Japanese, and the values they learned from school and American culture were in conflict with the values of the Issei.

But then came World War II and the internment of the Japanese Americans. Rising hysteria against the Japanese encouraged President Roosevelt, by Executive Order, to remove Japanese Americans from "military areas" into internment camps in the middle of nowhere. The impact of the mass internment was devastating, as the victims had to liquidate their property in hasty sales -- to the tune of $400 million in 1942 prices. And also devastating culturally, as the family-oriented Japanese Americans were forced to live in military-style barracks.

But the US needed labor. So in the spring of 1942 "some seasonal agricultural laborers were allowed furloughs to help ease farm labor shortages" and the furloughs were eventually changed to "permanent relocations." Then it was hundreds of railroad workers, then 4,000 Nisei college students -- to safe Eastern and Midwestern colleges. And in January 1943, the US started to recruit Nisei into the armed forces. Despite their bitterness, many Japanese American youth "seized the opportunity to prove their loyalty in combat." Then there were the Nisei in every military formation translating often un-coded Japanese military communications into English.

The internments proved a turning point for Japanese Americans.

Never had a group so proved their loyalty under impossible conditions.

In 1946 in California, an anti-Japanese initiative was defeated overwhelmingly by the voters. 

After the war, the Issei returned to their former lives and tried to rebuild their businesses. But the Nisei, educated and English speaking, were able to enter the mainstream. Their college degrees enabled them to build careers in "engineering, optometry, or business administration." By 1980 Japanese Americans were earning 11 percent more than ordinary Americans.  

Japanese American success is partly because they work more, and partly because they are educated more. But the Issei generation got its start in occupations with little education: "farming, contract gardening, small-business ownership." The new generation is assimilating, and intermarrying, reaching 50 percent in Los Angeles County in 1970. However, among the youth, grade point averages are declining towards the norm, and social problems are on the rise.

Next: The Blacks

Sowell's Ethnic America: Jews, Italians

After learning about the Irish and the Germans from Thomas Sowell in Ethnic America, it's time for the Jews.

The Jews

Three kinds of Jews migrated to the US. First the Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal; then the German Jews; then the Eastern European Jews after 1880.

Sephardic Jews were doing OK in Spain/Portugal until they were expelled in 1492. Many arrived penniless in colonial North America but soon recovered their wealth. There were about 2,000 Jews in the colonies at the time of the Revolution. But they looked down on the Ashkenazi Jews.

Ashkenazi Jews from Germany began as a trickle but ended up at half a million by 1880. They spread out throughout the nation, "working as small tradesmen and professionals". Many started out as peddlers on foot, then graduated to horse and buggy and finally opening local stores. The Guggenheims and Gimbels started out as peddlers. By 1880 40 percent of German Jewish families had at least one servant. Less than one percent were still peddlers or laborers.

Eastern European Jews came from the Russian Pale of Settlement that suffered pogroms after the assassination of the Tsar in 1881. These Jews had settled in Eastern Europe with the encouragement of Polish royalty in the 13th and 14th centuries. But then Catherine the Great confined them in the Pale of Settlement in eastern Poland and western Russia.  Fleeing from persecutions over one third of he Jews in eastern Europe fled to the United States in the four decades after 1880.

The eastern European Jews arrived penniless, but about 50 percent were literate. The "uptown"German Jews in New York looked down upon them, the "downtown" Jews, that worked in the needle trades in the Lower East Side. But the uptowners still gave the newcomers the benefit of the dense network of Jewish philanthropic institutions.

Because of their distinctive appearance and limited language skills and strict religious rules, the eastern European Jews could not spread out, but had to work among Jews. So they worked in the "sweatshops" of the garment trade of the Lower East Side in incredibly crowded tenements using Isaac Singer's new sewing machines. The garment factories were mostly owned by German Jews; a generation later eastern European Jews owned the factories and Italians were the workers.

The sweatshop today is a scandal, but they enabled women to work in the home without leaving children unattended. But the workers managed to save from their earnings to help the rise of themselves and their children. The children worked in the sweatshops, but seldom full-time, because their parents wanted them to go to school. But they didn't all go to college. Not in the first generation.

The spectacular rise of the Jews -- to top of the income rankings by 1980 -- is a testament to the experience of Jews over the centuries. They knew about barriers but knew how to circumvent them. And they largely created the clothing production industry and the movie industry. Plus many of them already had centuries of experience with urban life and commercial activity.

The Italians

Immigrants from Italy are primarily from southern Italy, mostly peasants and agricultural laborers. The culture they brought to the US reflects the culture of their homeland. Southern Italy is all wrong for prosperous agriculture. The growing season is dry; the rain comes in torrents; the agricultural land is malarial; people live in the hills; the landowners are beasts. So southern Italians trusted no-one except direct family; they did not experience a culture of law and policing. They have learned that individual initiative is dangerous, and right wrongs with the old system of vengeance. They opposed the education system imposed on them from the north, and weren't that keen on the Catholic Church.

There is a big difference between northern and southern Italian immigrants. Around 1900 12 percent of northerners were illiterate, but 54 percent of southerner. The northerners liked to pass for Americans and separate from the embarrassing southerners.

Italian immigrants from the same village tended to cluster near each other, and didn't trust people from other villages. They interacted fairly peaceably with the Jews, but not the Irish. They were dependable on the job, but lacked initiative and thus required close supervision. Typically they worked for an intermediary, a padrone, rather than an employer.

The employer paid the padrone, and the padrone paid the workers -- after deducting his fees, expenses, advances, rent, and credit charge.

Social reformers hated the padrone system and it eventually died out, as Italians became better adjusted to American life. 

Immigrant culture focused on the family, and the church did not earn their loyalty. In Italy they had not attended church much, and in America they didn't get on with the Irish that ran the church and the Catholic schools. They created mutual-aid societies, but they were fragmented according to village or provincial origins. Italian immigrants were active in labor unions, but created few organizations themselves. They had lower crime rates than other immigrant groups, but because they immediately responded to an insult or an attack with a knife people learned not to provoke them. The famous Italian Mafia didn't take off until Prohibition.

Italians were anti-education, and took a while to change their minds. This meant that the experts regarded Italians as mentally inferior. Even in 1980, college attendance by Italian Americans was below average. Still, the Italians did rise. In 1910 in Boston, two-thirds were manual laborers, but only 38 percent at the end of their working life.

Italian Americans caught up with the Irish occupationally. Even in 1909, 22 percent of Italians in Boston were in business compared to 5 percent of the Irish. But they made their way in ways that did not require formal education. They did not just work; they saved.

When they first arrived Italians had less hostility to blacks than other immigrant groups. But later the groups grew apart. Partly that is because Italians are less inclined to participate in "white flight" from lower-income neighborhoods. Italians get on much better with Chinese than with the Irish.

Next: Chinese, Japanese

Sowell's Ethnic America: Irish, Germans

I was reading a piece by Charles Murray on "The Immortal Sowell" and he mentioned Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America.

Sowell sees his books on race and ethnicity as the product of his obligation as a black scholar confronted with destructive racial policies.

Hmm, I thought. Did I ever read Ethnic America? So I went downstairs and found Ethnic America on my bookshelf. But I had never read it.

Wow. What a book. Right away, it answered a couple of questions I had about the Jews. As in, how did they get to be in Eastern Europe? And how does Yiddish appear?

But first. The key thing to understand about immigration is that before steamships, the migrants came in sailing ships that were really designed for cargo. For instance,

[T]he Irish came to America in vessels that carried lumber [to Ireland] from the northeastern United States, so that is where they landed when the ships returned.

Naturally, the living conditions in these sailing ships was vile, "without adequate ventilation, toilet facilities, or enough food or water." The migrants slept on shelves -- except that made women rather vulnerable, so many preferred to sleep on the floor in a sitting position.

The Irish

In Ireland, the Irish lived as a conquered people. Under the Penal Laws, Catholic Irish could not be educated nor could Catholic churches operate legally. The result was that 

Clandestine, grass-roots organizations of all sorts developed among the Irish to serve their religious, educational, and political needs... Not only did the Irish develop considerable organizing skills from having to provide themselves with a range of institutions normally provided by government; they developed skills to circumventing governmental institutions that they regarded as illegitimate oppressions.

So when the Irish came to the US in the 1840s potato famine in the holds of sailing ships they arrived in Boston and New York basically prostrate and without urban skills or money. So most of them worked as servants or day laborers. But they had experience in underground politics. That plus their charm and blarney got them into US urban politics. 

The Germans

German Americans are the largest group after those of British origin. They started coming in the 17th century as "Pennsylvania Dutch" that were actually deutsch. Many started as indentured servants, and went out to the frontier to farm because that was the cheapest land.

[T]he early German settlers quickly established a reputation for hard work, thoroughness, and thriftiness.

They tended to live in isolated German-speaking communities in a single religious denomination, but gradually learned English and contributed scrapple, chocolate cake, cole slaw, and sauerkraut to American cooking. On the frontier they often lived in communities next to the Protestant Scotch-Irish. The Germans were quiet, frugal and friendly to the Indians. The Scotch-Irish were quick-tempered, hard-drinking, and often in feuds with each other or the Indians.

Early German immigrants were predominantly farmers, but during the 19th century more and more had urban skills. For instance in 1849 there was a German optician named Bausch and a German businessman named Lomb: both immigrants. Then there was Roebling, the suspension bridge guy, plus Steinway, Weyerhauser, and Heinz. Not to mention Studebaker, Chrysler, Wanamaker, Rockefeller.

Much "innocent public family entertainment... music, picnics, dancing, card playing, swimming, bowling" was introduced to America by Germans.

Prior to Hitler, most German Jews identified as Germans rather than Jews, and some American-Jewish newspapers were prosecuted in World War I for being too pro-German.

Next: Jews and Italians.