January 24, 2018
Page 13
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O PINION
Racist Past of Immigration Policy Retooled
What sort of country
do we want?
J ose -a ntonio o rosCo
The condemnation of Trump’s re-
marks on immigration has
been swift and widespread.
Most of the denunciations
cast his ideas as seriously
out of line with American
ideals on immigration. The
problem is that they aren’t
really. From the very begin-
ning of our nation, there has been a white
nationalist core driving our immigration
priorities. Even as we struggled to be a
“nation of immigrants,” most of the peo-
ple we allowed in were chosen on the ba-
sis of national origin from the “whitest”
parts of Europe.
The first US naturalization law of
1790 required that anyone who wanted
to become a citizen had to be a “free
white person.” At its start, the Framers
envisioned the US as a political society
for members of a specific racial caste.
This requirement stayed in place until
the mid-20th century.
In 1924, the US passed the Johnson
Reed Act, one of the most significant
by
comprehensive immigration reform bills
in our history. It limited the number of
immigrants each year and those allowed
were selected on the basis of their coun-
try of origin. Immigrants from North
and Western Europe (such as Norway)
had almost no restrictions on en-
tering, while Southern and Eastern
European immigrants were severely
controlled. Immigration from Asia
had been almost completely prohib-
ited for several decades by this point.
The shocking issue with the act is
its little known origin story. The law
was the brainchild of a notorious white
supremacist named Madison Grant. In
1916, Grant wrote a book, The Passing
of the Great Race, which argued that
the truly white people in the US, the
Nordics, were at risk of going extinct
because of the massive influx of Poles,
Italians, Greeks, and Jews who Grant did
not consider white.
Grant’s book became a bestseller and
reading groups were formed among
members of Congress. Grant chaired the
committee to advise Congress on immi-
gration. The result was Johnson Reed.
Grant went on to inspire the Racial In-
tegrity Act for the state of Virginia that
prohibited interracial marriage. It was
widely copied throughout the US. So
for almost 40 years of the 20th centu-
ry, US immigration policy and marriage
law was specifically designed to create a
white majority population.
Congress didn’t remove this system
until 1965, replacing it with one that
shifted the demographic makeup of most
immigrants. Since 1965, the large bulk
of immigrants have been from Asia and
Latin America. The new policies today
favor creating a diverse pool of immi-
grants rather than one based on national
origins, and they encourage immigrants,
once here, to bring their family members
from their former home countries in a
process called “chain migration.”
Trump’s remarks, and the policy pro-
posals on immigration that he has re-
leased in the past year, indicate that he
wishes to return US immigration policy
to the way it was under Grant. Clearly,
his preference for individuals from Scan-
dinavia versus Africa or Latin America
would have pleased Grant immensely.
Trump’s advisors have also proposed
to reduce the total number of immi-
grants that can enter each year and those
allowed would be selected by a merit
system. Those immigrants demonstrat-
ing English proficiency and the right job
skills would have a preference. This ob-
viously will favor immigrants from those
countries with the educational systems
that can give people experience with the
American way of life. Such a system will
drastically limit immigration from Latin
America, Asia, and Africa by eliminating
chain migration.
About a century ago, Americans strug-
gled to find a language to describe what a
multicultural, racially diverse, and demo-
cratic society would look like. One group of
progressive thinkers, led by figures such as
John Dewey, Alain Locke, and Jane Add-
ams, urged us to imagine a nation where
immigrants were not forced to assimilate
to a single mold, but encouraged to keep
their traditions and enlarge the possibilities
of what it means to be an American. This
theme is missing from public discussions
on immigration today. But if we are look-
ing to the past for hints today about what
to do with our immigration policy that do
not involve reinventing a white nationalist
vision, then perhaps this is a conversation
we need to remember.
José-Antonio Orosco, Ph.D, writes for
PeaceVoice and is an associate professor
of philosophy and director of the Peace
Studies Program at Oregon State Uni-
versity.
Empower Black Women Running for Office
Give them the
consideration
they deserve
J essiCah p ierre
Oprah Winfrey’s re-
markable Golden Globes
speech rocked not only
the event’s A-list attend-
ees, but almost all of
America.
Winfrey cited the under-told story
of Recy Taylor, a young black woman
who was raped by six armed white men
during the Jim Crow era. Despite threats
to her life, Taylor reported her story to
the NAACP — where Rosa Parks made
it her mission to help her find justice.
That justice was never seen, but Oprah
ended her speech on an optimistic note.
“A new day is on the horizon,” she said.
“A lot of magnificent women” and “some
pretty phenomenal men” are “fighting
hard to make sure that … nobody ever
has to say ‘Me too’ again.”
In typical modern fashion, #Oprah2020
began trending on Twitter.
I’m a huge fan of Oprah. But I dis-
agree with the masses who want her to
run for president.
Not because she’s a political amateur,
by
but because America has a history of
looking to black women to save Amer-
icans from themselves — while not pro-
viding the proper recognition for their
labor or even respect.
John Dean, a White House counsel
under Obama, tweeted an endorse-
ment that sums this up: “She could end
Trump’s, and the GOP’s, misogyny
and racism like no one else!” he pre-
dicted, tagging his post #Oprah2020.
But why should the burden of clean-
ing up Trump’s mess fall on a single
black woman?
America has always trusted black
women to do the work, but it’s always
come at the expense of their well-being.
This notion goes all the way back to the
days of slavery, when enslaved black
women were forced to breast-feed their
slave master’s babies with their own
breast milk. Known as wet-nursing, this
exploited the motherhood of black wom-
en while forcing them to disregard their
own children.
Since then, black women have been
at the forefront of social movements in
America — dating back at least to Har-
riet Tubman’s leadership of the Under-
ground Railroad, which helped 100,000
people escape from slavery.
Whether it was the women’s suffrage
or civil rights movement, African Amer-
ican women were “the critical mass, the
grassroots leaders challenging America
to embrace justice and equality for all,”
as an exhibit at the Women’s National
History Museum puts it.
And when America’s earliest forms of
feminism began to unravel, it was So-
journer Truth who inserted what’s now
known as intersectionality — recogniz-
ing not only gender discrimination but
also its overlap with racial discrimina-
tion — in her famous poem “Ain’t I A
Woman?”
The list goes on. Black women like
Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church
Terrell fought passionately for women’s
voting rights without ever getting the
recognition that better known white suf-
fragettes enjoyed.
Even today, the cultural revolution
around sexual assault and harassment
owes a huge debt to the #MeToo move-
ment founded by Tarana Burke, a black
woman who started the movement a de-
cade before it went viral.
And it plays out through our elections.
In the Alabama Senate race, 98 percent
of black women voted for Doug Jones.
They’re the reason he beat Republican
Roy Moore, who was widely known for
making inappropriate sexual advances
on teenage girls.
Many Americans did recognize the
black women who kept Moore out of
the Senate. That’s good news. But it was
still a white former prosecutor they were
sending to Washington, who may now
shy away from black women to please
conservative whites in his deep-red state.
If we’re serious about having black
women lead, we can’t stop at recogniz-
ing them. We need to empower them
both economically and politically.
Over 100 black women are running
for state and local offices this year. Giv-
ing them the consideration they deserve
would say a lot more than simply count-
ing on Oprah — or anyone else — to
clean up Trump’s mess alone.
Jessicah Pierre is the inequality media
specialist at the Institute for Policy Stud-
ies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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