Racial Discrimination During The 1920's

8 Pages 1975 Words

R.L. supporters.
The language that native-born Americans adopted to describe those of ethnic minorities can be used as an indicator of their dislike of them; nicknames for minorities were not only mildly abusive but, as time went on, the terms became much more harsh. For example, the term used to describe a person of Latin background was “spic”, said to originate from the expression “No Speak Ingles”. Also, Italians were given a number of slang nicknames, such as “guinea” and “greaser”. Other nicknames for minorities that became popular in the twenties were kike, chink, Pollack, Hun and numerous others. African-Americans around this time were still being referred to as either “negros”, or more commonly, “niggers”. Although these derogatory terms are fairly mild compared with those used today, their sheer presence in American vocabulary at the time tells us that people were becoming much more intolerant of the ethnic minorities they encountered.
Along with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 came widespread fears that a similar communist revolt might sweep through America. This so called “Red Scare” was the accumulative belief that it was the foreign influences, especially those immigrants from eastern Europe, that were to blame for the Bolshevik inspired incidents throughout the United States, such as labor strikes and riots. At the height of the Red Scare, the Justice Department coordinated federal marshals and local police in raids on the homes of suspected communists and anarchists. With no search warrants, they arrested more than 6000 people, grossly violating civil rights and simple decency. These “Palmer Raids”, named after the then Attorney General Mitchell Palmer who arranged them, reflected the paranoiac mood within the nati...