Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy

America's reputation for welcoming all people and celebrating diversity is largely a myth: the great melting pot just never got hot enough to really simmer--or so claims King (professor of politics at Oxford) in this absorbing and persuasive study of U.S. immigration policy. From the earliest days of the Republic, he charts how concepts of race and ""whiteness""--variously signifying intelligence, moral capacity and ""assimilability""--helped shape both public attitudes and social policy as to who could and who could not become an American. Noting that ""Americans' toleration of diversity has always been easier in principle than in practice,"" King delineates how immigrants seeking to become Americans became pawns in a broader, always shifting, project to define and promote an ""American race."" Asians, particularly the Chinese and Japanese, he says, were always seen as ""fundamentally unassimilable,"" a sentiment that was supported by a series of draconian ""exclusion"" acts beginning in 1882. King draws heavily on the new discipline of ""whiteness studies""--particularly the groundbreaking work of Michael Rogin and Noel Ignatiev--to examine how the identity of ""being white"" has changed over the last two centuries. While he analyzes specific immigration policies, some of his most potent arguments are found in the examination of how the ""sciences"" of eugenics and intelligence testing were used to exclude various ethnic and racial groups from entering the country or becoming citizens. Citing writers such as Toni Morrison and Patricia Williams, and works of popular culture including Gone With the Wind and Snow Falling on Cedars, King's arguments are vivid and engaging. (May)