Racial And Ethnic Relations. Essays - , Term Papers

Racial and Ethnic Relations. Jed Smart March 8, 1999 Racial and Ethnic Relations. Summary of Pages 65-74, A Nation of Immigrants: An Overview of the Economic and Political Conditions of Selected Racial and Ethnic Groups. The North American economic development has seen several stages of development. The first stage of economic development was a plantation-slave economy mixed with mercantilism, the second stage of development was a competitive industrial economy, and the stage third stage of economic development is multinational capitalism. Economic institution and related governmental actions have formed the tides of migration and the resulting patterns of immigrant adjustment. The original groups of inhabitants in North America were Native Americans. These Native people lost much of their land and many of their lives to the vicious European invasions. Many groups of immigrants came to America, yet each group had left their native country for various reasons and under various circumstances. Some immigrant groups entered America as slaves, others came to work at low paying labor jobs, and some came as entrepreneurs. These various groups were discriminated against at varying level, depending on the resources the group brought with them. Those immigrants who made the journey to America on their own freewill with economic resources found that it was much easier to find good jobs than those immigrants with less than such freewill and resources. Small business opportunities unfortunately were not available for most immigrants. The waves of immigrant migration to the North America are highlighted in phases. With phase one came English colonists from the 1600's to the 1800's. The English created colonies and forced land from the native people. The English also established a form of capitalism. During this same time Africans were seized from their native lands and were shipped to America involuntarily in the form of property, to be used as slave labor. Also, phase one brought an era in which Irish Catholics immigrated to America, driven from their native land from the 1830's to the 1860's, due to famine, oppression, and poor living conditions. These Irish immigrants were able to obtain low wage jobs. Phase two began with the immigration of Chinese people from the 1850's to the 1870's; these people came due to recruitment efforts by the United States and in hope of obtaining better living conditions. The Chinese became employed mostly in construction, and menial service jobs. The Italians arrived between the 1880's and the 1910's. The Italian people were recruited for construction and other related low wage labor jobs. The Japanese immigrants came to live in Western America after migrating from their land to Hawaii from the 1880's to the 1900's. The Japanese people had also been recruited as laborers. The third phase of immigration to the United States began with the Mexican people from the 1910's to the 1990's, due to labor shortages from Europe and Asia. The Puerto Rican people started arriving in the 1940's and continue to arrive into the 1990's. These people accessed labor jobs in farms and jobs in blue-collar occupations. Recent Asian and Caribbean groups started arriving in the 1960's to the 1990's, mostly as political refuges, and also for political reasons. Commercial capitalism and the slave society were the effect of the East Coast colonial expansion of English land. The early economy was derived of a combination of enterprises under English rule and independent entrepreneurs. Included in this system was Slave plantations. The goal of English colonial settlement was to secure raw goods and markets for English products. In England merchants invested in the colonial industries. Other people from Europe began to immigrate into the colonies with the hope of becoming small farmers. In the colonies there were two types of major production, small farms, and plantations and merchants. From the 1600's to the mid 1800's African people were used for slave labor in colonial plantations. Around the time of 1860 there were as many as 3.9 million slaves in the united States due to a strong demand for their labor. The Southerners in the United States had held nearly all political and economic power in the government until the end of the civil war, which granted the Northern Industrialists the majority of governmental power in the United States. In the Northern Industrial society and in small farms immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia were among those in the labor force. These Europeans had been recruited from their countries, and they had also left for other reasons such as famine, political and economic problems and the hope of a better life. The immigration of Europeans laid the foundation of patterns of racial conflict. The