TOPIC 4.6 The Market Revolution: SoCIETY and Culture

Immigration, Fake News, & “Whiteness” during the Market Revolution

KC-4.2.III.A Large numbers of international migrants moved to industrializing Northern cities.

Objective 1: Students will evaluate the significance of changes and continuities in U.S. immigration law from 1790 to 1864.

Objective 2: Students will be able to explain the relationship between racism and U.S. immigration policy. 

Objective 3: Students will be able to describe a turning point in the evolution of the concept of “Whiteness” which will allow them to see the category as an invention to describe status, rather than a biological reality.

This key concept in an Antiracist classroom:

“Our immigration history reflects both America’s promise and also it’s failures…(learning about) these stories has the power to change the way we think about immigration and challenge xenophobia and racism.”

- Historian, Dr. Erika Lee, America for Americans

“Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it. Without the privileges attached to it, the white race would not exist…And so, we have the tragic story of how one oppressed 'race,' Irish Catholics, learned how to collaborate in the oppression of another 'race,' Africans in America, in order to secure their place in the white republic.”

- Historian Dr. Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White

“In modern times, we recognize this kind of reasoning as it relates to black race, (that those on the bottom of society must deserve their lot because of an inferiority within them, based on racial differences) but in other times the same logic was applied to people who were white, especially when they were impoverished immigrants seeking work.”

- Historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People

“Whiteness” was built into the foundation of American identity and immigration policy but the concept was still being developed in the late 18th century. The work of historians like Dr. Ignatiev, Dr. Painter, and Dr. Lee highlight how the immigration boom during the Market Revolution influenced America’s ideas of “Whiteness” which will help students understand a key part of American racial ideology: “Whiteness” is based more on status and privilege than it is on skin pigmentation.

Notes

This full lesson can be completed in under 40 minutes if needed. It is powered by primary source investigation, framed with whole class discussion at the start and end of class and contains a jigsaw in the middle. The jigsaw works best when the class is split into five groups.

Part of this lesson was originally created along with the founders of Immigrant History Initiative for an era 7 lesson that contextualizes the 1924 Immigration Act.  The complete lesson found on the Immigrant History Initiative site includes a deeper dive into the thinking of the founding fathers as well as early changes in immigration laws during the John Adams Presidency.

Recently, I have found it powerful to isolate the Market Revolution sources to create this lesson for the first semester.