Despite rampant xenophobia, many Mexican and Filipino families came over to the US for job opportunities. Specifically in California, the immigrant families were heavily involved in agricultural work due to their increased demand. While Mexican and Filipino immigrants came from different backgrounds, they were able to unite against the state’s discriminatory laws by forming unions (United Farm Workers, for example) and succeeded in bolstering civil rights of people of color. Secondary materials involving data visualization and textual analysis will be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of immigrants’ struggle. For example, I want to discuss about the role that the agricultural workers movement played in spurring public awareness on issues of worker’s rights. N-gram will be helpful in that regard because it shows how often particular words appear in books in certain time periods. In addition, a map will be used to illustrate sort of the discrimination that agricultural workers had to go through. Specifically, it can be used to show the segregation of minority workers and rest of Californians. The topic of agricultural immigrant is important to note because its historical civil rights movement can serve as an important blueprint for current social justice movement. Specifically, I want to point out that it is important to devise social movement not against a particular goal (i.e. womens’ rights), but rather unite struggle under one holistic theme.
Reflective Blog Post: 11/8/13
Textual analysis and distant reading can help us learn about immigration history; they are important process in scrutinizing primary and secondary sources. There are tools like Voyant that allow us to give us a brief background on a particular readable text. Checking for frequencies of words that appear in primary and secondary sources can provide us with crucial information like intention and tone of the text. Especially for primary sources, many of which could be written a long time ago, it could be important to note word choices to learn about a historical background. In class, we looked up and performed a textual analysis of a primary source about applied eugenics and found that many of its contents contained xenophobic sentiments. In addition, Google N-Gram also shows how frequencies of specific words and phrases could correlate with historic events. For future research, I want to use textual analysis to find out the impact of agricultural labor movement on awareness of labor rights. This could be done by looking at primary sources (mainly government documents and newspaper) about California’s farm movement. Looking for words like “farm workers” and “boycott” and to see whether frequencies of those words increased or decreased after major movements could be one way to find the possible correlation.
Activity: Voyant Tools
Today, I used the Voyant Tools to analyze the text of Chavez’s speech, which is one of my primary sources. After I eliminated all the stop words, I found that the words that appear most in the transcript are workers, farm, and pesticides. This is somewhat obvious as the objective of his speech was to raise awareness about the exploitative conditions in farms and demand the California government for remedies. However,the Voyant tools allowed me to investigate the speech in more details. For instance, the graph on the right shows the frequencies of of selected words in different points of the transcript (green = pesticides, pink = farm, and purple = workers). From this, I can analyze that the content and structure of speech. Chavez started out his speech with a long discussion of farm workers in the beginning, shown by the double peaks towards the left side of the graph. Later, he devoted most of his time talking about pesticides, and finished his speech by tying farm-workers and pesticides together, as shown by the overlap on the right side of the graph.
Map Visualization
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zXEXpx_CUhkg.kksbNnPQoPSY
This map shows the locations of Catholic, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches in Fairfax/Arlington area, which were put in different layers. I put this map together to see how far each church is located from each other. For each layer, a boundary was drawn that outlines each layer. For instance, the polygon in “Presbyterian Churches” layer has the largest area, which shows that while Presbyterian churches are distanced far apart, they cover the largest area of Fairfax/Arlington districts.
Reflective Blog Post 10/25/13
For my inquiry question, it would be helpful to aggregate the number of farm labor groups of different ethnic background in California to find out how largely was the agricultural sector dominated by immigrants. This would be important in providing me with some background story about labor relations in California. For instance, I want to know if the agricultural sector has been relegated the immigrants, or if the field was also filled with traditional White families. I was especially curious about the issue of labor relations among diverse groups because my previous readings of agricultural workers all suggested that it was the migrants who were disproportionately affected by California’s racist labor policies. I want to know if that is true, or if the White agricultural workers were also adversely affected by those same policies. In addition, I also want to aggregate data in order to observe the effectiveness of immigrant labor movement. For instance, there were many children of immigrant families who died due to pesticide poisoning. It would be interesting to find out whether the number of mortality among immigrant youth increased or decreased after the resurgence of United Farm Workers and other farm unions. That would provide me with substantive evidence about the role of immigrants in bolstering rights of workers.
Data Visualization
This line graph shows the number of Filipino population in California from 1910 to 2010. It has a hyperbolic shape, meaning that the Filipino population growth was exponential over the last decade. Based on this data, I can see that the 1960’s (the main period that I’m studying for my research proposal) was near the beginning of inflow of Filipino migrants. From this, I can implicitly conclude that the lives of immigrants were extremely difficult. A rampant xenophobia probably had affected Filipino migrants in adverse ways, hurting their abilities to access economic rights. For example, from my preliminary research, I found out that many Filipino agricultural workers died due to unsafe work environment. It had been nearly impossible for them to seek adequate protection due to their lower status in society.
Data Visualization
Research Proposal
Research Proposal
I am studying about the immigration history of Filipino and Mexican agricultural workers who lived in California and Seattle, because I want to find out their motivation for moving to the US despite rampant xenophobia and how they coped with racial and economic discrimination, in order to understand the role of labor movement in bolstering immigrant and civil rights.
Primary Sources Repository
1. Cesar Chavez’s Address at Pacific Lutheran University: This is a powerful speech delivered by Cesar Chavez, the leader of United Farm Workers Movement that started in California. He describes the harsh conditions where migrant workers had to work. For instance, he described the children of working families who died from severe pesticide poisoning. He claimed that while the immigrants provided cheap labor to California’s agriculture industry, there had not been a sufficient protection from the government. (http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/10.html)
2. Interview with Sarah Welch: Sarah Welch is a lobbyist who took part in the Grape Strike in the 1960s. She organized activist protest along with the Mexican laborers to improve the exploitative conditions of the workers. In this interview, she recalls the union formed between Mexican and Filipino workers who worked together despite their different ethnic backgrounds. (http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/welch.htm)
3. Picture of a migrant worker camp: This picture shows the house that migrant workers used to live in. The camp looks unorganized and unsanitary. There are wooden sticks which are spread all over the ground. The actual house does not appear sturdy and seems to be made out of weak woods. (http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/images/ufw/Migrant-Worker-Camp30s_700.jpg)
Secondary Sources
1. Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement: This book criticizes the reading of history agriculture labor movement as a binary perspective where “oppressed migrants” battled against the dominant White groups. This dominant, dualistic thinking is counter-productive to bolstering racial equality because it tends to focus on the story of white Americans with people of color appearing in the background as “the faceless crowds.” In addition, the race relations in America tend to be defined as a fight between Blacks and Whites, but that glosses over the struggle many other ethnic groups such as Mexican and Filipino workers who formed United Farm Workers to protest against oppressive farm labor rules. (Scharlin, Craig, and Lilia V. Villanueva. Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement. Seattle: University of Washington, 2000. Print.)
2. Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century: The book tries to lay the groundwork for social justice movement in the current political sphere by drawing upon the experiences of activists who were in the United Farm Workers in 1960s. The author describes his experience attending UC Berkeley in 1970s and observing different UFW volunteers, appreciating their commitment and dedications for social equality. He seeks to trace the history of UFW alumni and how the works that they had accomplished can be helpful in providing insights for mobilizing effective political movements. (Shaw, Randy. Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. Berkeley, Calif. [u.a.: University of California, 2008. Print.)
3. From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez, and the Farm Workers Movement: This book focuses largely on the changes in the structure of United Farm Workers movement. The author outlines the role that Chavez played as a leader of the movement and how it was integral to initial maintenance and expansion of the organization. He also seeks to differentiate the nuance of UFW boycott strategy which sought not only to create class solidarity, but also to actively include general consumers to the boycott movements. (García, Matt. From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. Berkeley: University of California, 2012. Print.)
4. “We Ask not for Mercy, but for Justice”: The Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers’ Union and Filipino Civil Rights in the United States, 1927–1937: This article explains the importance of the Filipino-led Cannery Workers and Farm Laborer’s Union as a civil rights organization. The author outlines the racist discrimination that Filipino workers faced. While the dominant White Americans sought to place Filipino under their control, the Filipinos used the Farm Union as a way to argue for greater protection not only to the workers, but to every American subjects. The article strongly argues that this Union must be highlighted as a significant part of the West Coast civil rights movement. (Hinnershitz, Stephanie. ““We Ask Not for Mercy, but for Justice”: The Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers’ Union and Filipino Civil Rights in the United States, 1927–1937.” Journal of Social History 47.1 (2013): 132-52. 21 Aug. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.)
Site Map/Data Dictionary
I will use a series of primary sources to describe the work environment of hospitals where Filipino nurses worked at and show the motivation for Filipino’s immigration to the US, specifically in New York. For my research proposal, I plan to use various interview excerpts of of Filipino nurses. Based on my preliminary research, it seemed like many different first-generation Filipino nurses had differing opinions about their working conditions. Therefore, creating a site map of various first-hand accounts would be important. In addition, I want to post pictures of advertisement of nursing schools and hospitals. That would be helpful in understanding the motives of Filipino to emigrate to the US, since a lot of them chose to leave their home country for better employment opportunities. Finally, I want to present documents from Filpino Nurses Association to describe their activities in facilitating broader Filipino immigrants.
Activity 10/8/13
Sources/Metadata
Title: The Instability of Human Types
Subject: Biology
Description: Argument against of innate racial inferiority; culture, not nature, explains differences among the people of the world.
Creator: Franz Boas
Source: Papers on Interracial Problems Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress Held at the University of London
Publisher: Ginn and Co. (Boston)
Date: 1912
Rights: Public Domain (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5069)
Format/Type: Website
Language: English
Identifier: N/A
Coverage: N/A
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