As I was reading last night, I came across something interesting. It had to do with exclusion and racism. Here is an example....
"The ( __) must go! They are stealing our jobs." In the crowds that came to hear him, men carried placards that read, "We will not give up our country to the (__)," and "Our rights we will maintain," and "White Labor Must Triumph."
In Congress, the arguments for exclusion were purely racist. Many of them were the same ones that had been used against the Irish decades earlier. The (__) took jobs from "real" Americans. The (__) were dirty, drank too much, and lived on too little money. They didn't spend their money in this country, preferring to save it and send it home.....They worked cheaply, and when they were out of work, unlike Americans, they became hoodlums. They carried disease; they were clannish; when they died they sent their bones back to ( __)-, as if American soil wasn't good enough for them. In other words, the (__) were totally unassimilable.
Anybody care to guess the race/country?
Let me know your thoughts.
4 comments:
Japanese?
No - good thought....
Italians?
nope. It was actually the Chinese in 1876. The same Chinese that came to build the railroads, and often gave their lives to do so. In 1882, The Exclusion Act was passed that barred Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. for ten years. Wives of current resident laborers were also barred.
All Chinese needed to be registered and carry papers at all times. AND they were declared totally ineligible for citizenship.
The United States joins Nazi Germany and South Africa as the only nations ever to withhold naturalization on purely racial grounds.
They did however allow Chinese entry if they were teachers, merchants, students, tourists or diplomats. By 1892 the Geary Act went into effect, which gave real teeth to the original law by requiring the Chinese to PROVE they had a right to be in the U.S. If found here unlawfully they were imprisoned for a year and then deported. They were denied bail and habeas corpus proceedings. In 1892 there was not one single Chinese immigrant to the U.S.
These acts gave the fine upstanding citizens of the U.S. “permission” to engage in violence and cruelty against the Chinese and the "Driving Out" began. The atrocities against these people were unbelievable - including burning them alive and shooting them in the back. They tied Chinese to the back of steers and sent them out across the desert. They were herded into railroad cars and driven from town. In Alaska they were crowded onto small boats and set adrift. This is the origin of the phrase - "He doesn't stand a Chinaman's chance."
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