Deporting Ottoman Americans

This episode introduces the Deporting Ottoman Americans podcast series. Narrated by Chris Gratien and featuring Emily Pope-Obeda, Torrie Hester, and Devin Naar. Most Americans descend from people born elsewhere. But what if instead of simply a nation of immigrants, we see our society as a eugenicist project forged by immigration quotas and selective deportation policies? This proposal may fly in the face of the civic nationalism many hold dear. Generations of politicians have repeated the mantra that anyone can be an American and that our identity is defined not by race or blood but by the embrace of laws and ideals. Yet many historians have dedicated their lives to studying the pivotal role of exclusion in making American identity through the histories of those who were deprived of the American dream because of race, color, and creed. In this introductory episode, we talk to scholars who have written about the emergence of deportation as a method of population control and punishment wielded by the US government on a mass scale since the 1920s. Then, we set the stage for the rest of our series by considering how people from the former Ottoman Empire were part of both the making and unmaking of America as a nation of immigrants. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2018/08/doap1.html CONTENTS Section 1 - 1936 FDR Speech at Statue of Liberty (0:00) Ottomans at Ellis Island (1:45) Intro Montage (6:16) Section 2 - Introduction (7:36) Section 3 - Ottoman Immigration The Late Ottoman Empire (9:32) Ottoman Immigrants (12:27) Section 4 - US Immigration Policy The Anti-Immigrant Turn (18:32) The Birth of Immigration Quotas (22:23) Section 5 - The Modern State America's Town Meeting of the Air (26:12) The Anti-Immigration Consensus (30:48) Section 6 - The Deportation State Immigration Policy During Great Depression (32:30) Pope-Obeda on Deportation History (38:13) Hester on Deportation and Diplomacy (44:41) Section 7 - Race and Immigration Racial Bias in the 1924 Quotas (51:10) Interwar Racism (56:14) Section 8 - Excluding Ottoman Americans Ottomans Caught in Between (58:27) WWI in Ottoman Empire (1:00:26) Impact of Quotas on Ottomans (1:02:16) Naar on Ottoman Americans (1:03:56) Deportation and Nationality (1:06:27) Section 9 - Series Preview (1:08:40) Section 10 - Credits (1:13:07)