Marcus Garvey: “The Negro Moses”
In this article by Robert A. Hill, Mr. Hill discusses both the elevation of Marcus Garvey as a political redeemer for African Americans (hence the nickname the “Negro Moses,” ) and also questions his motives. Was he sincere when he preached that the only way for African Americans to find equality was to leave the United States and reclaim Africa? Or was he simply another in a long line of brilliant orators, who used his gift of speech in order to obtain personal wealth? Hill also discusses at length some of Garvey’s successes, such as making the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) chapter in Harlem, New York, the “cultural center of the black world.” Hill also talks about the creation of “Garveyism”—a “religion of success, inspiring millions of blacks worldwide who sought relief from racial dispossession and colonial domination.” I found this article most pertained to Castles description of Refugees, where “a person residing outside of his or her country of nationality is unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” Garvey wanted African Americans to return to Africa because of personal persecution in America. Besides giving a general background of Marcus Garvey, this also contained some surprising facts about the man, such as despite being the main voice for the return to Africa and the goal of building a new African empire, Garvey himself never set foot in Africa in his entire life.
Hill, Robert A. (2011) Marcus Garvey, “The Negro Moses.” Africana Age African
and African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century. Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture.
Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto
In this article by Loic Wacquant, Wacquant discusses three common misconceptions about the American ghetto. Specifically they are (1): Identifying a ghetto simply as an urban area of widespread and intense poverty, without discussing the basis of the poverty, which renders the definition useless in terms of historical and sociological significance. (2): The idea that a ghetto is a disorganized social formation based solely on lack and deficiencies rather than identify the principals that underlie its internal order, and (3): To “exoticize” the ghetto by highlighting only the extreme and most unusual aspects of ghetto from the outside. These premises paint a very limited picture of a ghetto with very broad strokes, which does a disservice to historians and also to the people who live there. Wacquant breaks all the stereotypical definitions of ghetto by stating that “a ghetto does not have to be poor, not that it has to be uniformly deprived. And conversely, not all low-income areas are ghettos, however extreme their destitution.” He cites depressed rural counties of the Mississippi delta and Native American reservations as examples. It was tricky to link this article to a category of Castles migration; I would link it to Family Reunification Migrants, migrants who have come to join family members who have already entered an immigration country, and also Temporary labor migrants, men and women who migrate for a limited period in order to take up employment and send money home. I think this article will be valuable to my final paper, because it emphasizes the misconceptions of ghetto life; and it will show how Marcus Garvey was correct in the mistreatment of black Americans, in the sense that they were looked down upon as being “lower class” because they lived in American ghettos.
Wacquant, Loic J.D. (1998.) Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the
American Ghetto. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Volume 22, issue, 3 pages 507-510.
White On Arrival: Italians Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945
In this article by Thomas A. Guglielmo, he tells how Italians (and other European immigrants) arrived in the United States “with privileges that most African Americans could only dream of.” European immigrants were apparently welcomed into America with open arms, with the full opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labor and be welcomed into white social and political arenas, whereas African Americans were still looked upon as second class citizens; “destined to remain in a depressed, restricted neighborhood without hope of ever leaving it.” Guglielmo writes how Italians were largely accepted as white “by the widest variety of people and institutions—naturalization laws and courts, the US. census, race science, anti-immigrant racialisms, newspapers, unions, employers, neighbors, realtors, politicians and political parties.” This is not to say there wasn’t also anti-Italian sentiment going on. Guglielmo tells about how, in 1912, congressmen seriously debated whether or not Italians were “full-blooded Caucasians.” One anthropologist in Chicago who was published by the local newspaper in 1910 wrote, “If you don’t like the brunette, if you prefer a pure white skin…and feel certain that the future welfare of the United States depends on the prevalence of this type, then you will be justified in favoring the exclusion of Italians.” Being of Italian descent myself, I found this article very interesting, and I also felt this was pertinent to my paper on Marcus Garvey, as it points out the differences between the suffering of Italian immigrants as opposed to African Americans. If I were to link this article to Castles migration categories, I would choose both highly skilled migrants, “people with qualifications as professionals, technicians or similar, who seek employment through international labor markets for scarce skills. Many countries welcome such migrants and have special “skilled and business migration” programs to encourage them to come.” I’d also link this article to Family Members, as I know from my own family how one family member would migrate to America, get settled and then send word back (and money) back to Italy to send other members of the family.
Guglielmo, Thomas A. (2004.) White On Arrival: Italians, Race, Color and Power
in Chicago, 1890-1945. Oxford University Press.