America for Americans
A History of Xenophobia in the United States
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America for Americans
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Narrated by:
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Shayna Small
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Written by:
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Erika Lee
About this listen
This definitive history of American xenophobia is "essential reading for anyone who wants to build a more inclusive society." (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist).
The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. In America for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our nation from the colonial era to the Trump era. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their "strange and foreign ways." Americans' anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, and Mexicans deported.
Today, Americans fear Muslims, Latinos, and the so-called browning of America. Forcing us to confront this history, Lee explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens America. Now updated with an afterword reflecting on how the coronavirus pandemic turbocharged xenophobia, America for Americans is an urgent spur to action for any concerned citizen.
©2019 Erika Lee (P)2019 Basic BooksWhat the critics say
"This sweeping account draws parallels between Benjamin Franklin's worry over 'swarthy' Germans 'herding together' in the eighteenth century and Donald Trump's race-baiting today. Xenophobia, Lee argues, has been an indelible 'American tradition,' deployed to social and political ends since the country's founding. A manifesto as much as a history, the book shows how every large immigrant group since Franklin's time—Irish, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Middle Eastern—was 'scripted' by populist demagogues as alien and threatening."—The New Yorker
"Lee persuasively expresses that current hostilities over national borders are no exception to the nation's history. This clearly organized and lucidly written book should be read by a wide audience."—Publishers Weekly