Synopses & Reviews
The racially charged stereotype of "welfare queen"—an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers—is a familiar icon in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in
From Slavery to Poverty, her historical roots run deep. For, SenGupta argues, the language and institutions of poor relief and reform have historically served as forums for inventing and negotiating identity.
Mining a broad array of sources on nineteenth-century New York Citys interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief, SenGupta shows that these institutions promoted a racialized definition of poverty and citizenship. But they also offered a framework within which working poor New Yorkers—recently freed slaves and disfranchised free blacks, Afro-Caribbean sojourners and Irish immigrants, sex workers and unemployed laborers, and mothers and children—could challenge stereotypes and offer alternative visions of community. Thus, SenGupta argues, long before the advent of the twentieth-century welfare state, the discourse of welfare in its nineteenth-century incarnation created a space to talk about community, race, and nation; about what it meant to be “American,” who belonged, and who did not. Her work provides historical context for understanding why today the notion of "welfare"—with all its derogatory “un-American” connotations—is associated not with middle-class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, but rather with programs targeted at the poor, which are wrongly assumed to benefit primarily urban African Americans.
Review
"SenGupta's fascinating book is an important contribution to studies of welfare, reform, and race."
- American Historical Review
Review
“From Slavery to Poverty digs deeply into the vexed history of race and welfare in New York city. This book sparkles with fresh insights into the complicated story of black life in America's most important city.”
-Shane White,author of Stories of Freedom in Black New York
Review
"SenGupta's finely crafted study of post-slavery poverty in New York City gives a much higher level of understanding of the plight and courage of African Americans in the metropolis. By illuminating the tough economics of black life in nineteenth-century New York, she adds much-needed breadth to contemporary debate over how slavery affects the conditions of urban African Americans today."
- Graham Russell Gao Hodges, author of Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863
Review
“SenGupta's fascinating book is an important contribution to studies of welfare, reform, and race.”
- American Historical Review
“From Slavery to Poverty digs deeply into the vexed history of race and welfare in New York city. This book sparkles with fresh insights into the complicated story of black life in America's most important city.”
- Shane White, author of Stories of Freedom in Black New York
“This brilliantly written and boldly argued book finds the origins of popular ideas about race and poverty in a dynamic world of immigrants, former slaves, working women, transients, the elderly, prisoners, and children. Filled with rich details, compelling stories, and unexpected and enlightening examples, From Slavery to Poverty examines the struggles of poor and dispossessed people to expose the pernicious policies and dangerous ideas that cast African Americans as perpetually and inevitably dependent. Those of us who love history will return to this book over and over.”
- Craig Steven Wilder, author of A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn
“SenGupta's finely crafted study of post-slavery poverty in New York City gives a much higher level of understanding of the plight and courage of African Americans in the metropolis. By illuminating the tough economics of black life in nineteenth-century New York, she adds much-needed breadth to contemporary debate over how slavery affects the conditions of urban African Americans today.”
- Graham Russell Gao Hodges, author of Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863
Review
"Indeed, though race is firmly in the foreground of this analysis, the hidden strength of this book is its abundant illustration of how poor New Yorkers, of every ethnic background, used welfare institutions to their own purposes. In the difficult task of approaching welfare history from the pauper's point of view, Gunja SenGupta has succeeded... Well worth reading for those interested in the lives of the poor and the realities of social welfare, this book also provides new insights into the history of race ideology in the nineteenth century." "
From Slavery to Poverty stands as an excellent example of research showing how marginalized people found tools of self-actualization within an oppressive socity."
“SenGupta's fascinating book is an important contribution to studies of welfare, reform, and race.”
“From Slavery to Poverty digs deeply into the vexed history of race and welfare in New York city. This book sparkles with fresh insights into the complicated story of black life in America's most important city.”
“This brilliantly written and boldly argued book finds the origins of popular ideas about race and poverty in a dynamic world of immigrants, former slaves, working women, transients, the elderly, prisoners, and children. Filled with rich details, compelling stories, and unexpected and enlightening examples, From Slavery to Poverty examines the struggles of poor and dispossessed people to expose the pernicious policies and dangerous ideas that cast African Americans as perpetually and inevitably dependent. Those of us who love history will return to this book over and over.”
Review
“The complex, ambiguous connections among the immigration past and present are given masterful treatment in From Arrival to Incorporation, which presents a series of case studies that are essential reading for anyone who seeks guidance in the interpretation of present-day immigration and its consequences for American society. This volume gives multidimensional depth to the contemporary landscape of diversity.”
-Richard Alba,co-author of Remaking the American Mainstream
Review
“Given recent anti-immigrant sentiments and evolving policies regarding todays immigrants, From Arrival to Incorporation is timely in its emphasis on the need to move beyond a binary vision of immigrant experiences.”
-PsycCRITIQUES,
Review
“It offers a mixture of theory, historical methods, quantitative approaches, ethnographies, and commentaries that allow readers to compare articles in useful ways and suggests their utility in multiple settings.”
-Journal of World History,
Review
“This brilliantly written and boldly argued book finds the origins of popular ideas about race and poverty in a dynamic world of immigrants, former slaves, working women, transients, the elderly, prisoners, and children. Filled with rich details, compelling stories, and unexpected and enlightening examples, From Slavery to Poverty examines the struggles of poor and dispossessed people to expose the pernicious policies and dangerous ideas that cast African Americans as perpetually and inevitably dependent. Those of us who love history will return to this book over and over.”
-Craig Steven Wilder,author of A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn
Review
Uniting African-American history, welfare history, whiteness studies, and women's studies, SenGupta exposes and contests the racialized nineteenth-century imagery of America as an open, competitive, individualistic, monolithic, "white Republic."-The Journal of Interdisciplinary History,
Synopsis
The United States is once again in the midst of a peak period of immigration. By 2005, more than 35 million legal and illegal migrants were present in the United States. At different rates and with differing degrees of difficulty, a great many will be incorporated into American society and culture.
Leading immigration experts in history, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science here offer multiethnic and multidisciplinary perspectives on the challenges confronting immigrants adapting to a new society. How will these recent arrivals become Americans? Does the journey to the U.S. demand abandoning the past? How is the United States changing even as it requires change from those who come here?
Broad thematic essays are coupled with case studies and concluding essays analyzing contemporary issues facing Muslim newcomers in the wake of 9/11. Together, they offer a vibrant portrait of Americas new populations today.
Contributors: Anny Bakalian, Elliott Barkan, Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Caroline Brettell, Barry R. Chiswick, Hasia Diner, Roland L. Guyotte, Gary Gerstle, David W. Haines, Alan M. Kraut, Xiyuan Li, Timothy J. Meagher, Paul Miller, Barbara M. Posadas, Paul Spickard, Roger Waldinger, Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield, and Min Zhou.
About the Author
Elliott Barkan is Emeritus Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at California State University, San Bernardino. He is the author or editor of numerous books including, most recently, From All Points: America's Immigrant West, 1870s-1952.
Hasia R. Diner is The Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at NYU. She is the recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual & Cultural History. Her books include The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000; Hungering for America; Her Works Praise Her; and The Lower East Side Memories.
Alan M. Kraut is Professor of History at American University. His numerous books include, most recently, Covenant of Care: Newark Beth Israel and the Jewish Hospital in America (co-authored with Deborah Kraut).