Becoming American: The Hmong American Experience

Hmong Americans, who came from a pre-literate society and rural background, went through many acculturation barriers and have had many successes between the time they first arrived in 1975 and the year 2000. Their first decade was preoccupied with their struggle to overcome cultural shock and acculturation difficulties. The second decade is their turning point to be new Americans, beginning to run for political office, establish business enterprises, achieve in education, and reduce their high rate of unemployment and welfare participation. Hmong Americans in 2000 appeared to have achieved much, yet have some serious challenges still ahead

Setting Sun: Popular Culture Images of the Japanese and Japanese Americans and Public Policy

The negative, stereotypical depictions of the Japanese and Japanese Americans in American popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century were of great importance in the promulgation of the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, the internment of Japanese Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The American public had been adequately prepared to accept inaccurate representations of Japanese and Japanese Americans; therefore, there was little public outcry against these actions

For the Benefit of All: Strategic Recommendations to Enhance the State's Role in the Integration of Immigrants in Illinois (Report of the New Americans Policy Council, Year One)

On November 19, 2005, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed the New Americans Executive Order, a first-in-the-nation attempt to adopt a coherent, strategic, and proactive state government approach to integrate the rapidly growing immigrant population of Illinois. For this purpose, the Executive Order created a New Americans Policy Council comprised of 24 prominent Illinois business, faith, labor, community, philanthropic, and governmental leaders with experience in this field. While Illinois has undertaken several efforts to advance immigrant integration, neither it nor any other state has developed a comprehensive and strategic integration policy. Given the rapidly evolving demographics; the fast paced changes of an increasingly global economy; and the growing demand for both high-skilled and low-skilled workers; immigrant integration is one of the most overlooked issues of governance. The Policy Council's strategic approach emphasizes strategies that allow immigrants to be empowered to participate to the fullest extent possible in our economic and civic life, while fostering social cohesion with their new neighbors.This is the report of the New Americans Policy Council for the first year of the New Americans Executive Order project, published in 2006

Changes in Insured Coverage and Access to Care for Middle-Class Americans, 1999-2002

This brief examines how insurance coverage and access to health care of middle class Americans changed between 1999 and 2002. We contrast the experience of the middle class with that of lower and higher income Americans over the period. These years were largely dominated by the downturn in the U.S. economy, although the first of the three years (1999) represented a continuation of the broad economic expansion of the 1990s

Learning the Fighting Game: Black Americans and the First World War

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and immediately after the war. This study explorers early NAACP activism, the Garveyite movement, and the early foundations of the Civil Rights Movement

Risk of cardiovascular disease in first and second generation Mexican-Americans.

This study examines the cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk profiles of first generation (FG) and second generation (SG) Mexican-Americans (MA) in two large national studies--the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Study (HHANES) (1982-1984) and the National Health and Examination Study (NHANES) (1999-2004). The main outcome measures were five individual risk indicators of CVD (total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, and smoking) and a composite measure (the Framingham Risk Score [FRS]). The analyses included cross-survey (pseudocohort) and within-survey (cross-sectional) comparisons. In multivariate analyses, SG men had higher rates of hypertension and lower rates of smoking than FG men; and SG women had lower total cholesterol levels, higher rates of hypertension, and lower rates of smoking than FG women. There was no generational difference in the FRS in men or women. The cross-survey comparisons detected generational differences in CVD risk factors not detected in within-survey comparisons, particularly among MA women. Future studies of generational differences in risk should consider using pseudocohort comparisons when possible

Exploring the Epistemology of Illicit Drugs

In this essay I explore the epistemology of drugs in America. That is, how Americans come to know and define drugs and their users; and, in turn, how those definitions manifest in social institutions. I argue that at the present moment, the cultural environment surrounding the ways in which Americans define and experience drug use— whether it is deemed as acceptable usage or a threat—is determined by three main institutions. The first and most predominant is the criminal justice system, which operates according to a regime of “narcopolitics.

[Review of] Peter C. Rollins and John E. O\u27Connor, eds. Hollywood\u27s Indians: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film

Hollywood inherited conflicting myths of Native Americans: barbaric savages or Noble Savage. Influenced by the latter romantic view, James Fenimore Cooper in print and George Catlin and Edward Curtis in art conveyed to an American public a portrait of a noble but vanishing race of America\u27s first people. The dime store novels and Wild West shows of the late 1800s played with the dueling idea of a noble yet menacing Red Man, and Hollywood picked up this created myth of American Indians which, while ostensibly sympathetic, actually perpetuated stereotypes of a depraved and primitive race. Hollywood then packaged these images, made them her own, and secured for generations of people the predominant image today held of Native Americans. Since, as Hannu Salmi theorizes, movies are the myth by which Americans understand Western history, this is an alarming state of affairs

Rethinking Corporate social Responsibility: A Fleishman-Hillard/National Consumers League Study

In late 2006, Fleishman-Hillard Inc. and the National Consumers League prepared for the second annual survey of Americans' perceptions of corporate social responsibility against the backdrop of sweeping national political change following the 2006 midterm elections. Democrats had captured both chambers of Congress as well as many governorships across the country. For the first time in more than six years, a greater percentage of Independents voted with Democrats, helping to turn the tide against incumbent Republicans.In the wake of the November 2006 elections, we wondered whether Americans were viewing corporate social responsibility from a fourth perspective — as a voter.  This year's survey, therefore, investigates Americans' perception of corporate social responsibility based on political party affiliations. We also used the survey findings to determine whether Americans expect government to play a role in realigning corporate America's priorities and values with their own. We identified several compelling themes that appeared throughout the data. In particular, a substantial majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents believe that:1. The American public's priorities appear to be out of alignment with corporate practices.2. U.S. corporations do not act responsibly.3. Government should be involved.Our survey findings lead us to believe that Americans have reached a tipping point with their expectations of — and frustrations with — business. So much so, that they are now willing to have government step in to help realign corporate behavior with the values and priorities that they value

[Review of] Allen L. Woll and Randall M. Miller. Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography

Allen Woll and Randall Miller in Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television have compiled in one volume the writings about the images of ethnic and racial groups in American television and film. Woll and Miller state in their Introduction that the purpose of their book was to attempt to unite the work (the nature and importance of mass media stereotypes and their effects on society) from a wide variety of disciplines, languages and fields of study in order to expand the vistas of scholarly research in this area. Ethnic and Racial Images is divided into twelve chapters, with each considering specific ethnic or racial groups: (in alphabetical order) Afro-Americans, Arabs, Asians, East Europeans and Russians, Germans, Hispanic Americans, Irish, Italians, Jews, and Native Americans. The first chapter is a general overview of the subject of racial and ethnic images and the final chapter is a kind of miscellaneous section entitled Others which includes Africans, Armenians, Dutch, East Indians, Greeks, Hawaiians, Louisiana Cajuns, Norwegians, Swedes, and Turks