Assimilation In 1800s

As the United States gained momentum, the young nation acquired a much obsessive notion to change the world for the better. In attempting to do so, the United States colonized and destroyed foreign nations and stole their resources in the process. Through exclusion in the public sector, the American government implemented the assimilation of immigrants and colonized peoples in a racialized manner, which provoked American society to heighten xenophobic and racist notions. In this historical analysis, I will explain how assimilation during the 1800s was an erroneous idea by first discussing how racial exclusion practices in the education system of the 19th century were implemented according to the political cartoon by Louis Dalrymple “School

Numerous persons are represented but simultaneously segregated in the cartoon. The students in the back of the classroom are light-skinned and studious while the dark-skinned, confused, and frightened new students sitting in front of the classroom are being reprimanded by the white Uncle Sam. Furthermore, there is a black child cleaning the window behind Uncle Sam appearing as a “happy-go-lucky”, a Native Indian student is sitting alone by the door with their book upside down, and an Asian student is outside the door. The established segregation by students based on their race and origin, in society and in the classroom setting, is clear in the cartoon, for assimilation is not approached through inclusion but rather through

American contractors exploited Asian labor as they “sought to utilize Chinese labor whenever possible” but white workers “railed against the Chinese because of the threat they ostensibly posed to their status as a ‘free’ laboring class”. Furthermore, American citizens feared cultural depletion by Chinese immigrants as a result of cultural differences that they determined to be “distasteful- physical appearances, language, manner of dress, food, religion, and social customs”, hence the symbolic exaggeration in the cartoon of the third phase.

In the third phase of the cartoon, the cartoonist embodies what the American sentiment towards the Chinese was during the 1800s. By depicting the Chinese man as a hungry, violent, and a thieve, it is clear that this immigrant group was unable to be given respect in American society. The action of literally consuming Uncle Sam, and eventually the Irish man, is an exaggeration that symbolizes how the Chinese were feared to taking over American jobs, territory, culture, and other social institutions and replace white