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Paul J. Ramsey, Young-In Oh. Struggles over Immigrants' Language: Literacy Tests in the United States, 1917–1966., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1545–1546, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1545
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Young-In Oh's Struggles over Immigrants' Language is an insightful and focused study of literacy tests in the United States that partially fills a void in the immigration historiography. Compared with other aspects of immigrants' daily experiences, Oh notes, “the role of language … has not received a great deal of attention” (p. 149), a point echoed by other historians working on linguistic issues (Carlos Blanton, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 [2004]; Paul J. Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling in the United States: A History of America's “Polyglot Boardinghouse” [2010]). Beginning with the Immigration Act of 1917 (the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) and concluding with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which essentially negated states' discriminatory literacy tests, Oh argues that literacy tests were a blatantly racist attempt to restrict the “new” immigration from eastern and southern Europe and, at the state level (especially in New York), had the consequence of facilitating assimilation to the nation's dominant language and culture, thus unintentionally expanding the notion of “white” America.