Summarize& Response - Essay Example

Summarize and Response The reading focuses on servitude obliteration in America after the Civil War that saw African Americans win their political privileges as well as those meant for movement. Masters saw African Americans as cheap task force meant to embrace agricultural errands in S. America majorly in cotton farms. Due to mistreatment from their masters, most of them quit in order to find better employers in other industries. These massive changes were a big blow to the white employers and they sought to find another work force.

The main solution considered by most planters was importing labor from the Chinese because of their hard work and apolitical nature. Chinese labor seemed appropriate because they were foreigners who did not have political powers hence could not challenge the power structure that was in place (Cornell & Hartmann 119). Although the campaign was not that successful, it produced few immigrants mostly at the Delta region in Mississippi. In 1870, the number of Chinese laborers increased though it did not solve the labor problems.

This was short-lived until 1876 when the white supremacy expelled the ruling government. The strong economic and political positions occupied by many blacks reversed and many blacks went back to sharecropping (Cornell & Hartmann 120). The Chinese moved to grocery business and benefited more than in plantations although the whites racially segregated them. The whites viewed the Chinese as blacks because the main reason they came was to replace the position of blacks than that of whites. The Chinese were temporal residents and they did care more of their economic status than their social with an objective of helping their families (Cornell & Hartmann 121).

With time actors such as success, time and new families made some of the Chinese change their minds going back home. Some intermarried with black women and they managed to invest more in Mississippi because of good business. Towards 1940’s and 1950’s most changed their orientations because most started to develop their roots in Mississippi to be their permanent homes. This motivated the Chinese to make a racial transition by mediating with the white powers to consider them as whites (Cornell & Hartmann 122).

For the Chinese to succeed in this, they had to convince the whites by cutting their ties with blacks. They also convinced the whites to be no threat to their economy because they were few in number. The Chinese assimilated themselves as whites and changed their ways of life to be like their white counterparts not to be treated equally but not as blacks (Cornell & Hartmann 123). The Chinese were successful because they were not challenging the racial segregation as a whole or the idea of white superiority.

Secondly, their reputation in business favored them because they could contribute in charity organizations thus bringing their relationship with the white (Cornell & Hartmann 125). This reading is not so similar to the large population of Chinese Americans in the U.S with most of them being through struggles of discrimination. We can see assertion from the Chinese of Mississippi when they decided to remain at the Delta region and change what others thought of them. They did some ethnic reorganization by changing different norms so that they could blend into whites’ expectations and resisting the identity the white assigned them (Cornell & Hartmann 126).

Finally, the Chinese also tried to alter the racial categories despite the Delta having major population of whites and blacks by creating a boundary between them and the blacks. Through this, they managed to create a much closer boundary between them and the whites than it has ever been before. Work CitedCornell, Stephen E. & Hartmann, Douglas. Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks [u.a.: Pine Forge Press, 2007. Print.