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The Men and Women We Want: Gender, Race, and the Progressive Era Literacy Test Debate
Author(s): Jeanne D. Petit (Author)
- Publisher: University of Rochester Press
- Publication Date: 1 Oct. 2010
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 214 pages
- ISBN-10: 1580463487
- ISBN-13: 9781580463485
Book Description
Jeanne Petit argues that the literacy test debate was about much more than reading ability or the virtues of education. It also tapped into broader concerns about the relationship between gender, sexuality, race, and American national identity. The congressmen, reformers, journalists, and pundits who supported the literacy test hoped to stem the tide of southern and eastern European immigration. To make their case, these restrictionists portrayed illiterate immigrant men as dissipated, dependent paupers, immigrant women as brood mares who bore too many children, and both as a eugenic threat to the nation’s racial stock. Opponents of the literacy test argued that the new immigrants were muscular, virile workers and nurturing, virtuous mothers who would strengthen the race and nation. Moreover, the debaters did not simply battle about what social reformer Grace Abbott called “the sort of men and women we want.” They also defined as normative the men and women they were — unquestionably white, unquestionably American, and unquestionably fit to shape the nation’s future.
Jeanne D. Petit is Associate Professor of History at Hope College.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The xenophobia exacerbated after the 9/11 attacks in America brings to sharp focus current immigration policies. . .
The Men and Women We Want represents a timely contribution to the study of such policies by focusing on the debates about immigration restriction in America in the late nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. . . thus [the book] can become a point of reference in contemporary debates over immigration. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIESIn her insightful new book. . . Jeanne Petit offers a thorough and detailed history of the immigration literacy test, from its genesis in the 1890s to its passage in 1917. [This book] is an essential contribution to the scholarship on the vital policy issue of the literacy test. . . sheds new light on the rise of restrictionist immigration policies in the United States. JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
Petit has added notably to the understanding of this historical controversy by elucidating the influences of sex and gender as well as the activities of female participants. . . [offers] innovative interpretations of early 20th century US reaction to its increasingly diverse popultation. Recommended. CHOICE
