Prejudice and Racism

2 Pages 524 Words

PREJUDICE&RACISM
Until the closing years of the 19th century America preserved most of its official racist animus for blacks and Indians, but in 1882 it added a new category when Chinese were expressly denied entry to the United States, and those already in the country were forbidden the rights and protections of citizenship.
In 1907 the exclusion was extended to the Japanese.
Beginning in the 1890ies, as the flood of immigrants from the poorer parts of Europe turned into a deluge, racism became more sweeping, more rabid and less focused.
Anti-immigrant fraternities were founded and books like Madison Grant´s Passing of the Great Race ( which argued „ scientifcally“ that unrestricted immigration was leading to the dilution and degenaration of the national character) became bestsellers.
Early nicknames that were only mildly abusive (likecalling the Germans cabbage heads or Krauts( from their liking of sauerkraut) grew uglier and more barbed ( chink, kike, dago, polack, spic,hebe)
Never before nor since have intolerance and prejudice been more visible, fashionable or universal among all levels of American society.
In 1907 the Congress established a panel called the Dillingham Commision, that concluded that immigration before 1880 had been no bad thing-the immigrants primarily from nothern Europe were industrious, largely protestant and had assimilated well-while immigration after 1880 had been marked by the entrance into America of uneducated non-protestant masses from southern and eastern Europe.
But in fact all evidence points in the opposite direction.
It was because America had a base of low wage, adaptable,unskilled labour that it was able to become an industrial powerhouse.
For over half a century American business had freely exploited its foreign born workers, and now it was blaming them for being poor and alienated.
Also great intolerance and prejudice was shown towards the eastern European Jews, that found themse...