Learning the Ropes: Immigrant Expressions of Modern Racism.

This paper is based on a larger study using qualitative research to explore how immigrants acquire an understanding of race and racism in the United States. New immigrants assimilate into a country's dominant culture, and in particular, into its racialized culture. I argue here that immigrants respond to racial knowledge by often expressing the same type of "modern racism" expressed by native-born white Americans. Further, I explore how racial knowledge is expressed in the words of immigrants, often unintentionally. Finally, I examine how immigrant ideas of open social mobility and U.S. achievement ideologies are intricately connected to their views on race in the United States. We live in a white racist dominant culture, and for this social system to be reproduced and maintained, new members of society must be taught the dominant ideologies, and then, in the process of becoming members of society, must express these ideologies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]