Race In The 20th Century

The 20th century was quite the time for America. It was growing tremendously into the world superpower that it is today and the so called “American dream” was beginning to look like the real deal for certain people. A lot of factors have gone into this, but a question one might have is did race play a role in the shaping of America during this time and if so, how significant was its impact? I argue that through the use of harmful tactics, such as assimilation and dehumanization, race had a tremendous impact on the shaping of American society during the 20th century. The first way in which race impacted American society was through assimilation. Assimilation, as it pertains to race has been used to strip people of their cultural identity in an attempt to “civilize” them into the European standards of society. With more and more Europeans immigrating into America they needed to reinforce their “whiteness” and tried to do so by getting everyone else to abide by their standards. An example of this would be the Dawes Act of 1887 which was a law that attempted to integrate the various indigenous tribes of America into ordinary “American citizens” so that white America could occupy their land. A supporter of the Dawes Act named Alice Fletcher sums up it’s purpose by stating that "the Indian may now become a free man; free from the thralldom of the tribe; freed from the domination of the reservation system; free to enter into the body of our citizens.” They were forced into boarding schools to learn the language and principles of European society in order to become what Fletcher calls “citizens.” The damage caused to the indigenous community as a result of this practice shows how race was able to significantly impact America through assimilation. Another example of this would be the Mexican American community in Los Angeles. According to George Sanchez, author of Becoming Mexican American, America was attempting to “Americanize” this community of Mexican immigrants who were going through an identity formation and developing unique cultural aspects about themselves. …show more content…
Dehumanization is the process of constructing the image of a community in a way that makes them and their cultural/religious practices seem inferior. The only way white America can justify their crimes is by convincing the rest of the world that the victims of their oppression are somehow less than human and incapable of governing themselves and that is exactly what they did. One example of this again pertains to the indigenous tribes of America. In Reginald Horsman’s Race and Manifest Destiny it is stated that “The intellectual faculties of this great family appear to be of a decidedly inferior cast when compared with those of the Caucasian or Mongolian races.” This and various other accusations of the indigenous people of being “savage” shows how effective dehumanization can be because it painted an image of them that made the rest of the world think they were not only a danger to them, but to themselves as well. Another example of a group that was depicted in an unrealistic fashion would be the Chinese community in San Francisco, Chinatown. According to Nayan Shah’s Contagious Divides it is said that during this time “they depicted Chinese immigrants as a filthy and diseased "race" who incubated such incurable afflictions as smallpox, syphilis, and bubonic plague and infected white Americans.” Basically, a lie was created about the Chinese people being