Gobernanza

The beginning of the 20th _{century saw the peak of immigration to the United States. It also} brought rapid expansion to the West Coast. During this time most major cities on the West Coast had more foreign-born than native-born residents. Americanizers worked diligently to inculcate these new groups through English instruction. Ellwood Cubberley (1909) Professor of Education at Stanford University believed that the goal of educating immigrants was:

to break up these groups or settlements, to assimilate and amalgamate these people as part of our American race, and to implant in their children, so far as can be done, the Anglo-Saxon conception of righteousness, law and order, and popular government, and to awaken in them a reverence for our democratic institutions and for those things in our national life which we as a people hold to be of abiding worth (p. 15-16).

Although the West Coast had been Mexican territory a half century earlier, many Americanizers viewed those of Mexican descent as “foreign” by the early 1900s. Following the passage of the Home Teacher Act (1915), Americanization programs in California focused heavily on

instructing Mexican mothers in the areas of English, school attendance, household duties, and sanitation, as well as American citizenship (Sánchez, 1993). While the Immigration Act of 1924 distinguished immigrants based on their “whiteness” nationwide, Mexicans in the Southwest were difficult to classify due to economic and political ties with Mexico (Ngai, 1999). However, this did not prevent educators from discriminating against them. Donato (2003) in his article “Sugar Beets, Segregation and Schools: Mexican Americans in a Northern Colorado

Community, 1920-1960,” demonstrated how schooling experiences for Mexican Americans suggest that Americanizers never intended for their students to become a part of American society. Instruction of Mexican immigrants included education of youth in only English,

segregated content, and segregated schools. Even at the elementary school level, “teachers were indifferent about Mexican American children and expected them to leave school at a very early age” (Donato, 2003, p. 82). These low expectations were often reflected in low graduation rates. Although some Mexican Americans attempted to open their own Spanish language schools, such schools were not able to stay open for long.

By the 1930s, the Mexican American Movement actively advocated for the use of American education to aid in the progress of Mexican Americans while remaining proud of being Mexican. For example, in publications such as the Mexican Voice, they encouraged other students to overcome the effects of the prejudice they experienced in American schools. Therefore, Mexican immigrants did not blindly assimilate to American culture as Americanizers wished. Instead, Mexican Americans crafted their own identity as ethnic Americans where their native language was still prominent, but some agency towards accepting American ideals (i.e. advancement through education) was evident.

Despite efforts by the Immigration Act of 1924 to prohibit Asian immigration to the mainland, Asian Americans were able to successfully craft their own ethnic identity in Hawaii in the early 20th _{century. Tamura (1993) in Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei} Generation in Hawaii describes the acculturation process of the Japanese immigrants in the U.S. territory. While schools were used as the “chief instrument of Americanization” (Tamura, 1993, p. 55), the Japanese were able navigate dual identities and form their own concept of what it meant to be a Japanese American. Similar to Mexican Americans in California, the Japanese in Hawaii faced immersion in English-only programs, segregation, and prejudice. According to Asato (2003), the Japanese worked from the beginning of their immigration (the 1800s) to establish Japanese language schools, which operated outside of American school hours. By the

20th _{century these schools caused much conflict with Americanizers, who believed “good} citizenship meant that the Nisei should discard all traces of Japanese ways” (Tamura, 1993, p. 152). Although legislators in Hawaii passed laws to try to limit the reach of the Japanese language schools, such laws were eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (Asato, 2003; Kam, 2006). Failing with the law, Americanizers in Hawaii then tried another approach. They launched anti-Japanese propaganda, which increased as World War II

approached (Okawa, 2011). As tensions with Japan grew, many Japanese language schools were often targets of overt racism, and Japanese leaders in Hawaii were arrested and interned (Okawa, 2011). Regardless of the challenges they faced, Japanese students were able to slowly integrate into the segregated English Standard Schools. Although most Japanese preferred speaking their “native” Hawaiian Creole English, many became bilingual, or even trilingual with the additions of Standard English and occasional Japanese. After WWII many Japanese fought to reopen their schools, and the use of Hawaiian Creole persists to this day (Kam, 2006). Many schools remain open to this day. Thus, as Tamura (1993) argues, there is “clear evidence of the triumph of acculturation over Americanization” (p. 159) for Japanese Americans.

Overall, immigrants in the 20th _{century demonstrated their ability to actively acculturate to} American society through maintenance of their ethnic identities. Despite Americanizers’ attempts to force immigrants into the roles they envisioned for them as workers, both Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans were able to retain vestiges of their native culture and language. In California, Mexicans succeeded in integrating their culture into American dress through the zoot suit, the commercialization of Spanish music, and the distinctly “Mexican air” that permeates Los Angeles (Sánchez, 1993). Japanese Americans, with schooling and

somewhat more successfully than Mexican Americans, as well as gain significant political and economic power in Hawaii. Regardless, both cultures were able to choose how they wanted to acculturate to American culture, and thus, were able to expand beyond the narrow roles Americanizers envisioned for them.