Ignoble Moments in U.S. History: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

On May 6, 1882, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all immigration into the United Stated from China for ten years (h/t Melynda). With subsequent renewals, it remained in effect until 1943. Technically, the law only barred “Chinese laborers,” but it effectively prevented all immigration for reasons I’ll get into below.

Chinese immigration to the western United States began around the time that area became the western United States (as opposed to northern Mexico), in the late 1840’s. The California Gold Rush was a major factor, but the (white) Americans coming to California from the eastern U.S. weren’t necessarily thrilled with them being there, but they were tolerated for some time.

Chinese railroad workers sierra nevada

As the Gold Rush wound down, Chinese immigrants and their families settled in cities, especially San Francisco. Many of them took work in restaurants and laundries, and Chinese-Americans played a prominent role as laborers in railroad construction. After the Civil War, however, they made convenient scapegoats for all number of complaints: Continue reading

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Before “Post-Racial” America…

…the U.S. government implemented an immigration enforcement initiative that was actually called “Operation Wetback”:

Operation Wetback was an immigration law enforcement initiative created by Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Joseph Swing. The program was implemented in May of 1954 by the U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, and utilized special tactics to combat the problem of illegal border crossing and residence in the United States by Mexican nationals. Ultimately, the program came as a result of pressure from the Mexican government to stop illegal entry of Mexican laborers in the United States based largely on the Bracero Program. After implementation, Operation Wetback was met with allegations of abuse and suspension of certain civil rights of Mexicans that were captured and deported by U.S. Border Patrol

I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’ve progressed to a more “enlightened” point in our culture, though. I think the main lesson we, as a society at large, have learned is that programs like that shouldn’t have such overtly derogatory names.

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What I’m Reading, August 14, 2014

The Domestic Cat Genome Has Been Fully Sequenced, and It’s Fascinating, Annalee Newitz, io9, August 11, 2014

Now that we have this complete, annotated genome sequence, scientists will be able to analyze cat genetics much more effectively. Cats suffer from many of the same diseases as humans, including versions of leukemia and AIDS, so the cat genome may help us understand the development of these conditions better. Don’t worry — that doesn’t mean scientists will be experimenting on kitties. It just means that we can compare their genomes to ours to see whether there are similarities that shed light on why we are vulnerable (or not) to the diseases.

Cats also have what biologists call “a highly conserved ancestral mammal genome organization,” which means that many stretches of their genome haven’t changed much over evolutionary time. Put simply, domestic cats haven’t changed much since they first evolved. This could allow us to understand mammal evolution better. It could also answer a question that remains a mystery: why did dog domestication change canines so much, whereas cat domestication didn’t change cats much at all?

As migrant children face backlash, communities mobilize to drown out hate, Laurie Smolenski, Waging Nonviolence, August 10, 2014 (via Yes! Magazine)

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A South Texas Rancher’s Perspective

Hugh Fitzsimmons is a rancher in Dimmit County, Texas, part of an area once known as the Wild Horse Desert. He offers his perspective on the current situation on the U.S.-Mexico border. Unlike most people, Mr. Fitzsimmons has seen what’s going on firsthand. He describes how fear and compassion can go hand-in-hand.

Map of Texas highlighting Dimmit County

Not pictured: Mexico, but it’s close by.

He starts with the frightening:

One incident sparked this fear, which has since wormed its way into my psyche. In the spring of 2005, three members of a gang accosted me while attempting to break into my home. I stopped them, but I feared for my life.

Then he moves on to the merely notable: Continue reading

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What I’m Reading, July 31, 2014

Conservatives Resort To Lying About Child Refugees’ Vaccination Rates To Justify Their Deportation, Omar Araiza, Burnt Orange Report, July 29, 2014

Conservatives are coming up with multiple kinds of excuses in order to deport the Central American child refugees, all while trying to hide their true prejudice against them. Case in point: “Our schools cannot handle this influx, we don’t even know what all diseases they have. Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx,” recently said U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, trying to make a healthy safety case for deportation and “war” against these children.

Sadly for conservatives, their excuses and lies simply don’t match up to the facts. In a horrible twist of irony, according to statistics by the United Nations, Central American children have a higher vaccination rate than U.S. children.

And whose fault is this? The very same conservative officials and voters in America raging war against vaccinations, and health insurance coverage. [Emphasis in original.]

Mississippi’s last abortion clinic to stay open —  for now, Irin Carmon, MSNBC, July 29, 2014 (h/t Scott Lemieux)

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Are activists in Maryland taking a bold stand against diseased birds of prey?

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Photo by Jenna Johnson, © The Washington Post

Or are they just a colossal disappointment to English teachers everywhere?

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Uncompassionate Conservatism

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a solution to the humanitarian crisis brewing at the U.S.-Mexico border, as thousands of unaccompanied minor children flee horrific atrocities in Mexico and Central America. Send the little lawbreakers back.

Cruz asserted that “the most heartbreaking aspect of this is you look at some 90,000 little boys and little girls coming in illegally, the people bringing them in, they’re not well-meaning social workers.”

“These are hardened, transnational, global carters,” he insisted. “They are cruel, vicious men. These little boys and little girls are being subjected to physical violence, to sexual violence.”

According to Cruz, drug cartels “cut off and send back body parts” of children to try and force their families to pay a ransom.

“They will force one little boy or one little girl to cut off the fingers or ears of other little boys or little girls,” he pointed out, adding that officials told him that children immigrating to the U.S. had been “maimed.”

“This is heartbreaking, and it is the direct result of President Obama’s lawlessness,” Cruz said.

But the senator proposed a solution: Send the children back to the countries where they had been mutilated and raped.

“The children will not stop coming, and will not stop being subjected to this horrific physical violence and sexual violence unless and until this administration begins enforcing our laws,” he warned. “That is the opposite of a humane policy.”

I’m still unclear how President Obama is wholly to blame for everything going on in various parts of Latin America right now, but I suspect that clarity is not the point for the Senator that my state shamefully elected.

I just want to know—specifically—which laws Senator Cruz thinks President Obama could enforce that would somehow end all of this and, presumably, allow all of these children to return to their homes on a wave of flowers and puppies. (Of course there are no such laws, or at least none that could offer any sort of solution to the conditions as they currently are. The Senator is just using whatever scenario presents itself to bash the President. If a group of children from, say, El Salvador had marched up to a border crossing in California requesting asylum in exchange for a verified cure for cancer, Senator Cruz would want to know why Obama hadn’t come up with the cure himself, since he’s supposed to be smart and stuff. Then he’d suggest he bomb the capital of El Salvador for withholding vital medical knowledge from American pharmaceutical companies. Then he’d eat a live goat as a sacrifice to the bald eagle god he secretly worships……okay, I’ve said too much.)

Fir0002 at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons

“Wait, what was that last part?”


Photo credit: Fir0002 at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons.

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What I’m Reading, April 7, 2014

Too stupid to insultScientifically Illiterate Congressmen Are Resigning the World to Ruin, Brian Merchant, Vice, April 3, 2014

That is the right word; buffoon. These men are not necessarily or wholly unintelligent. They can be charming, or funny, and are often good at writing speeches. They have no lack of talent. But each is, as Merriam-Webster’s instructs us, “a ludicrous figure.” They are “gross and usually ill-educated,” at least concerning the subject matter over which they govern, as per the definition. And these buffoons have their feet jammed in the doorway to the halls of power at what is perhaps the worst possible juncture in history.

Because they believe they know science better than scientists—ludicrous—they vote against any action to repair the damage being done to the carbon-saturated climate at all. They, along with scores of their fellow Republicans, have banded together to form what may be the most uniquely scientifically ignorant cliques in international governance. As Ronald Brownstein wrote in a 2010 piece for the National Journal, “It is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here.” They comprise the Congressional Science Committee that doesn’t get science, and they are determining our policies. Or blocking them.

Rep. Steve King Warns Patriotic DREAMers: ‘We Have A Bus For You To Tijuana’, karoli, Crooks and Liars, April 4, 2014

Rep. Steve King is letting all his hate hang out now, unabashedly and unapologetically. If you came to the US illegally with your parents when you were too young to know better but now want to volunteer for the military, King thinks you should go straight back to the country your parents left.

Rand Paul Would Reward Tax Evasion, Xenophon, Breitbart Unmasked, April 3, 2014

[F]or the rest of us who cannot use accounting tricks with Swiss subsidiaries, it is a great big middle finger. Taxes are for the little people, not big corporations or the friends of Republican senators. If you tell Rand Paul that the tax burden has shifted too much from corporations to individuals in the last 30 years, or that offshore tax shelters play an outsize role in the squeeze on the middle class, Rand Paul will tell you that it is just the way things are supposed to be, and that we should give awards to the companies that best represent his vision of a libertarian future.

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Lewd Asian Women

Several friends will be performing an original play entitled L.A.W. Lewd Asian Women starting next week. The play is based in part on a 19th-century court case involving 22 women from China who were detained by immigration officials in San Francisco based solely on the conclusion of one commissioner that they were “lewd and debauched.” The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the California statute in question in Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275 (1875).

KUT aired an interview with the cast about the show (hopefully the embed function works here):

The show runs Fridays and Saturdays, beginning February 28 and ending March 8, 2014, at the Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin. Tickets might sell out, so you should buy some and go to the show.

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