[Review of] George Anthony Peffer. If They Don\u27t Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration Before Exclusion

If They Don\u27t Bnng [Bring] Their Women Here by George Peffer is another significant addition to the skimpy repertory of books on the history of Chinese American women, which includes Judy Yung\u27s Chinese Women of America (1986) and Unbounded Feet (1995), Benson Tong\u27s Unsubmissive Women (1994), and Huping Ling\u27s Surviving on the Gold Mountain (1999). Unlike the other volumes, Peffer\u27s book focuses on the debarment of Chinese women from immigration to the United States before the 1882 general exclusion of Chinese laborers. He argues that the cultural constraints imposed by the traditional Chinese joint family structure and the male sojourner mentality did not suffice to induce the protracted shortage of Chinese female immigrants and that the Page Law of 1875 and its enforcement played a more pivotal role in restricting the immigration of Chinese women. Using data from U.S. government documents, court records, and newspapers, he documents with some measure of success that although the Page Law literally forbade only the entry of prostitutes (including Chinese ones), the broader applicationof this law resulted in a de facto exclusion of Chinese female immigrants during the seven years prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Peffer also demonstrates how California\u27s anti-Chinese press shaped and intensified the expanded application of the Page Law, how the anti-Chinese sentiment led to the possible overcounting of Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco in the 1870 and 1880 censuses, and how the de facto Chinese female exclusion engendered the lopsided development of the Chinese community. By piecing the scattered information together, this book enhances our understanding of the causes of the Chinese bachelor\u27s society\u27 as well as the experiences of Chinese female immigrants before the Chinese exclusion

[Review of] Evelyn Nakano Glenn. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor

Evelyn Glenn is among the pioneers who laid the groundwork for an intersective approach of race, class, and gender to the analysis of social inequality. This new book carries on and extends her well-established intellectual project along this line of inquiry in both depth and breadth. In Unequal Freedom, Glenn offers an exemplary historical and comparative analysis of how race and gender as fundamental organizing principles of social institutions shaped American citizenship and labor system from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of World War II. She begins with a brief introduction to the book project in the introductory chapter. In the next three chapters, she lays out a conceptual framework for her analysis, devoting one chapter to each of the three twisted threads: race and gender, citizenship, and labor. Glenn also provides historical backdrops at the national level for her analyses of citizenship and labor. The following three chapters shift to regional-level analysis with three case studies: Blacks and whites in the South, Mexicans and Anglos in the Southwest, and Japanese and haoles in Hawaii. The final chapter epitomizes the common themes across chapters and compares the three regional cases in citizenship and labor systems

Trends in Black-White Church Integration

Historically, the separation of blacks and whites in churches was well known (Gilbreath 1995; Schaefer 2005). Even in 1968, about four years after the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still said that eleven o\u27clock on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week (Gilbreath 1995:1). His reference was to the entrenched practice of black and white Americans who worshiped separately in segregated congregations even though as Christians, their faith was supposed to bring them together to love each other as brothers and sisters. King\u27s statement was not just a casual observation. One of the few places that civil rights workers failed to integrate was churches. Black ministers and their allies were at the forefront of the church integration movement, but their stiffest opposition often came from white ministers. The irony is that belonging to the same denomination could not prevent the racial separation of their congregations. In 1964, when a group of black women civil rights activists went to a white church in St. Augustine, Florida to attend a Sunday service, the women were met by a phalanx of white people with their arms linked to keep the activists out (Bryce 2004). King\u27s classic Letter from a Birmingham Jail was a response to white ministers who criticized him and the civil rights movement after a major civil rights demonstration (King [2002])

Social Distances of Whites to Racial or Ethnic Minorities

Prior research on social distance between racial or ethnic groups in the United States has focused mainly on attitudes of white Americans toward African Americans. Extending previous research, this study analyzes social distances of whites to racial or ethnic minority groups by investigating how whites feel about blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. The main hypothesis is that whites feel coolest toward blacks, warmest toward Asians, and somewhat in between toward Hispanics. The 2002 General Social Survey and ordinary least squares regression are used to test the hypothesis. The results indicate that contrary to our hypothesis, whites feel coolest toward Asians, warmest toward Hispanics, and somewhat in between toward blacks. Nativity, religious similarity/ dissimilarity, racial hierarchy and tension, proximity of the country of origin, and group diversity may offer plausible explanations for the unexpected result. This study also examines which types of whites are more likely to maintain a greater or smaller social distance with the three minority groups. Implications of the findings for race and ethnic relations today are addressed

Transnationalism and Genealogy

Transnationalism and genealogy is an emerging subfield of genealogy which intersects with other fields. The last two to three decades have witnessed a significant growth in this subfield, especially in the areas of transnationalism and family arrangements, transnational marriage, transnational adoption, transnational parenting, and transnational care for elderly parents. However, large gaps remain, especially with regard to the impact of transnationalism on lineage. In filling some lacunas in the current literature, Transnationalism and Genealogy represents an initial attempt to frame the relationship between transnationalism and genealogy. The articles included in this book cover various aspects of transnationalism and genealogy from historical periods until the present, with perspectives from anthropology, sociology, history, and African studies. The topics stretch from transnationalism and the emancipation of black kinship to the transformation of a Chinese immigrant family from traditional to transnational as well as the impact of this transformation on its family relations and lineage, a family history of transnational migration across four nation/city states in four generations, the role of social media platforms (Facebook in particular) in facilitating transnational care chains in the Trinidadian diasporic community, and a comparison between Chinese immigrants in the United States and Singapore in transnational parenting. The introductory essay offers a laconic assessment of the subfield of transnationalism and genealogy

Trends in Whites\u27 Perceived Black-White Residential Integration, 1972-2008

Trends and patterns in black-white residential segregation or integration in the United States have been studied extensively at an aggregate level (e.g., census tract or block-group) using census and survey data. This study examines trends in whites\u27 perceived black-white residential integration using individual-level data from the 1972-2008 General Social Surveys. Our bivariate and logistic regression analyses show that, at the national level, the rate and likelihood of whites’ self-reports of sharing the same residential neighborhood with blacks had continuously increased from 1972 to 2008. Our regional analyses further confirm that the rates of whites’ self-reports of living with blacks in the same residential neighborhood had risen in the same period uniformly across regions with the South making the greatest strides and that, controlling for other variables, the likelihood of whites\u27 perceived black-white residential integration had increased dramatically in the South since the late 1980s and relatively slowly in other regions. We also identify the profile of whites who are more or less likely to report living with blacks in the same neighborhood. The implications of the findings are addressed

Are Older People Really Happier Than Younger People?

In recent years, many media reports have claimed that older people are happier than younger people. We question the total validity of this claim. Analyzing data from General Social Surveys 1972-2016, this study reveals that the happiness of older adults depends on their health status and economic status, and it also detects a significant J-shaped relationship between age and happiness over a lifetime. Additionally, we find significant differences in happiness across generations and over time. Our findings challenge the popular claim in the media reports and the U-shaped and inverted U-shaped patterns detected in the academic literature and provide a more complete picture of the relationship between age and happiness

The “Becoming White Thesis” Revisited

The claim that some non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups such as the Irish, Italians, and Jews became white in historical America has largely been taken for granted these days, but we see a need for a qualified rectification of this thesis. Did these non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups really become white? We argue that the answer to this question depends on how “becoming white” is defined. We have found no evidence to support the “becoming white thesis” in terms of change in the official racial classification of these groups in the record of social institutions such as U.S. censuses, naturalization laws, and court cases. Changes in the meaning of race in U.S. racial and ethnic lexicon explain why there is a discourse on how these non-Anglo-Saxon European groups changed their “races” to white. If “becoming white” did happen to these groups, its real meaning was a change in their social status from a minority group to part of the majority group rather than in racial classification. Evidence lends credence to this argument. Our findings help settle a debate about if some non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups became white and have implications for race relations today and its pedagogy

Comprehensive Annotation of Bidirectional Promoters Identifies Co-Regulation among Breast and Ovarian Cancer Genes

A “bidirectional gene pair” comprises two adjacent genes whose transcription start sites are neighboring and directed away from each other. The intervening regulatory region is called a “bidirectional promoter.” These promoters are often associated with genes that function in DNA repair, with the potential to participate in the development of cancer. No connection between these gene pairs and cancer has been previously investigated. Using the database of spliced-expressed sequence tags (ESTs), we identified the most complete collection of human transcripts under the control of bidirectional promoters. A rigorous screen of the spliced EST data identified new bidirectional promoters, many of which functioned as alternative promoters or regulated novel transcripts. Additionally, we show a highly significant enrichment of bidirectional promoters in genes implicated in somatic cancer, including a substantial number of genes implicated in breast and ovarian cancers. The repeated use of this promoter structure in the human genome suggests it could regulate co-expression patterns among groups of genes. Using microarray expression data from 79 human tissues, we verify regulatory networks among genes controlled by bidirectional promoters. Subsets of these promoters contain similar combinations of transcription factor binding sites, including evolutionarily conserved ETS factor binding sites in ERBB2, FANCD2, and BRCA2. Interpreting the regulation of genes involved in co-expression networks, especially those involved in cancer, will be an important step toward defining molecular events that may contribute to disease