How Has Race Determined Inclusion, Exclusion, and Segregation in U.S Society

 在过去的几十年里，美国一直主导着世界的经济，政治，军事等方面，与美国白人一样一直在享受的是“贵族和高贵的种族”特权，以及排除和隔离其他种族的特权。种族分类是基于选定一些可见特征，包括肤色，头发颜色和质地，以及面部特征。然而，即使排斥和隔离显然是在现有的美国社会，种族差异的交融已经最终促进社会的包容和融合。本文通过分析方式，决定比赛的包容性，排斥和隔离在美国社会的方式，提出种族决定了排斥和隔离立法和政策制定和文化认同的方式。

The U.S has been dominated the world for the last few decades in terms of economy, politics, and military, and white Americans have been enjoying the privilege of being the “noble and superior race” by excluding and segregating other races. Racial classifications are based on selected, visible traits, including skin color, hair color and texture, and facial features. Frequently, climate differences and other environmental factors are also included(TYNER,1999, p55). However, even though the exclusion and segregation are obviously existing in US society,  the mingling of difference races has eventually promotes the inclusion and integration of the society. This thesis , by way of analyzing the ways that race determines the inclusion, exclusion and segregation in U.S society, proposes that races determines the exclusion and segregation by way of legislation and policy making and cultural identity, yet determines racial inclusion by integrating people from different races.

Racial exclusion in US society has long been existing and is obvious. Racial exclusion can be referred to as the segregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines. The expression most often refers to the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from other races, but also applies to the general discrimination against people of color by white communities. The white American race excludes other races in American society by various policies, programs and laws. Although current policies, such as denying prenatal health care or attempting to stop undocumented immigration from attending public school education are indicated by some observers to achieve the same goal, sterilization and exclusion programs are largely adopted. (Roberts 1997)Various policies, programs and laws have been employed to preserve the purity of races and places. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the latest victims of “yellow peril” hysteria---the Philippine immigrants were demanded to be excluded by a public outcry because of the unavoidably interwined immigration and political independence. 

The case of Philippine is not an coincidence of race exclusion in U.S, the development of American immigration legislation is designed to separated the various races already resided in U.S, and it is a way of preventing the entry of undesirable races of interracial marriages.(TYNER,1999, p59). Any immigrants regarded as threatening and not easily assimilable will be excluded from the U.S society. Based on the immigration legislation, “Chinese women and criminals are identified as potential threats to the United States”, and the 1891 immigration act excluded persons suffering from contagious diseases, felons, polygamists, and persons convicted of misdemeanors.(TYNER,1999, p60)

White American exclude other races in the society also by establishing the identity of whiteness. Being white is a symbol of access to public panoply and enjoying private privileges and it ensures that one can avoid being discriminated and being the object of others’ domination. However, in course of immigration, “mixed race applicants often failed to establish their whiteness”. (Martinez, 1996, p99). In the case of Mexican-Americans, just because they are recognized as white by law does not mean that social actions admit their privileged legal status as white. Instead of enjoying a privileged status, Mexican-Americans faced discrimination and prejudice very similar to that happened to African- Americans. “Mexican-Americans are excluded from public facilities and neighborhood and the targets of racial slurs, they typically lived in one section of town because they were not permitted to rent or own property anywhere except in the ‘Mexican Colony”(Martinez, 1996, p100)

Even though mixed blooded people escape the exclusion by the society, they are also hardly to integrate into a society that is dominated by white Americans, that is to say, they are segregated for what blood they are born with. Segregation can be defined as the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. A good example of this point is Mexican students in US society. As mentioned before, Mexican-American suffered from discrimination and unequal treatment in U.S, the same is true for Mexican students. Mexican students usually have a lower achievement test scores and according to the study conducted by the University of Texas at Austin, there lies a strong correlation between school segregation and their failure of academic performances. “School segregation has also been linked to political issues, particular to the unequal power relations between ethical minority parents and school boards composed of dominant group members”. (Menchaca and Valencia, p 222) . Because Mexicans were conquered in the Mexican-American war, Anglo-Saxon people enjoyed absolute political dominance and political policies are issued oppress Mexicans. Segregation of Mexican students was one of the unavoidable consequences. In addition, the prejudicial attitudes of Anglo leaders was also an important reason fro establishing and expanding school segregation. 

The school segregation of Mexican students reflects the social segregation for non-white Americans in the U.S. Whites dealt with the other races largely by maintaining considerable social distance from them, whether through avoidance in residence, marriage, friendships, or elsewhere. Other races in American societies now are not equally treated not only in terms of public facility, housing and education, but they psychologically feel inferior to white Americans because they are frequently discriminated and despised living in such a segregated society. The same is also true for African-Americans. After the American civil war, hundreds of thousands of African immigrants flooded American society hoping to enjoying the achievements and fruits gained by the war, only to find that only a small portion of them were able to gain access to industrial jobs and training programs. As a result, most of African-Americans made do with back-breaking wage work, low income, long ours and the insults and prejudices from white Americans.

Despite all the inevitable exclusion and segregation which is left because of historical and social reasons existent in US society, the US government is still making every effort to mix or assimilate different races into an integrated society, which will be beneficial for the development of the society and the welfare of the people as well, that means, various races coexisting in US society influences or determines the inclusion or integration in this mixed society and means that the society is willing to include and involve he various cultures and races.  Race inclusion represents a set of beliefs that Americans hold about race, including the belief that American have long mixed across racial lines, more so than in any other society, and that nonwhites are included in the American nation. As mentioned by Marcias, the popular Latin music performance, which serves as the city’s multicultural urban activity drew together more people from different races and different neighborhoods that municipal and country musical programs. Besides, the African Americans compaigned for a “Double Victory” for the sake of racial intolerance home and abroad which, at the same time, promoted enforcing the creation of a fair employment practice to enable young workers of different colors, especially Mexican-Americans to make fortune on the regional defense-economic boom. Everyone was supposed to receive the same public services (schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.), but with separate facilities for each race. In practice, the services and facilities reserved for African-Americans were almost always of lower quality than those reserved for whites. In addition to encouraging white families to move to suburbs by providing them loans to do so, the government uprooted many established African American communities by building elevated highways through their neighborhoods. Seen above, at the same time of being excluded or segregated from the thriving society, people from other races, like African Americans, are making every effort to make themselves valued and recognized, most importantly, treated equally and given equal rights. On the other sides, the US government and the community are working hand in hand to bring people from other races into this whole and loving society by respecting different cultures, holding cultural events to involve everyone so as to reach the goal of “social inclusion”

All in all, this thesis illustrates how race determines the inclusion, exclusion and segregation in US society. It is obvious race inclusion coexists with racial exclusion and segregation in the United States. Even though racial inequality and racism are so ubiquitous by way of excluding and segregating other races that they pervade all dimensions of American life, they are relatively inevitable and are gradually worked through by the effort of American government and citizens alike and by cultural assimilation and integration.

Roberts, D.E. 1997. Who May Give Birth to Citizens? Reproduction, Eugenics, and Immigration. In Immigration out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigration Impulse in the United States, edited by J.F.Perea, 205-219. New York: New York University Press.
James, A. TYNER, “The Geopolitics of Eugenics and the Exclusion of Philippine Immigrants from the United States” in The Geographical Review, 89(1), January 1999
Martha Menchaca and Richard Valencia, “Anglo-Saxon Ideologies in the 1920s-1930s: Their Impact on the Segregation of Mexican Students in California”
Anthony Marcias, “Bringing Music to the People: Race, Urban Culture and Municipal Politics in Postwar Los Angelos.


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