America & Ethnocentrism:Racism

This was only blogged about because not many people know our history and well, you don't know where you’re going unless you know where you've been right? I am aware this probably will not get as many read as I’d like it to, but I’d rather blog about a topic that means something to me sometimes, than something that I KNOW people will read more. Even though other topics are just as important there's still much to be acknowledged about other things. Well, enjoy (its a bit long it goes into the ways certain ethnic groups were discriminated against due to ethnocentrism, but I promise it will be worth the time), hopefully you’ll learn some stuff you didn’t know, like I did :)

American Ethnocentrism & Racism

Scientific racism

Is basically various scientific theories, most from the 19th century, which manipulated various forms of physical anthropology, anthropometry, phrenology and other now discredited disciplines, in order to created a hierarchy basically, of different ethnicities, or “races”. These theories since then have been discredited as unethical, bias, or as pseudo-sciences that were used to justify have racism, imperialism, colonization, and slavery.

Social “Darwinism” --The ideas of Thomas Malthus and Herbert Spencer which applied ideas of evolution and "survival of the fittest" to societies, nations and businesses became popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, and were used to defend various, sometimes contradictory, ideological perspectives including laissez-faire economics, colonialism, racism and imperialism.[5]

Darwin himself insisted that social policy should not simply be guided by concepts of struggle and selection in nature and that sympathy should be extended to all races and nations.[5]

Ethnocentrism, Segregation & Intimidation in the
United States

White & Black Supremacy groups

After its founding in 1867, the Ku Klux Klan, a clandestine organization sworn to perpetuate white supremacy, became a power in the South and beyond, eventually establishing a northern headquarters in Greenfield, Indiana. The Klan employed lynching, cross burnings and other forms of terrorism, violence and intimidation.[20]

The United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors believe in black people's superiority to white people, that whites are "devils," devoid of both heart and soul, that the color of white people is the result of leprosy and genetic inferiority, and that the ancestors of white people are the sexual partners of dogs and jackals.[6]

Jim Crow

Jim Crow refers to laws in the south that allowed whites to legally segregate blacks which lasted from 1876 to 1965. They stated "separate but equal" status for Black Americans. But actually, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those provided to white Americans.

Although it was required that the facilities provided were equal they were not. One of the most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and blacks. But state-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.

The remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act; by the end of the 1960’s the Jim Crow era had ended.[7]

Trail Of Tears

Refers to the forced relocation in 1838 of the Cherokee Native American tribe to the Western United States, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees. [8]

The Cherokees were not the only Native Americans forced to emigrate as a result of the Indian Removal efforts of the
United States, and so the phrase "Trail of Tears" is sometimes used to refer to similar events endured by other Native American people. [8]

About 17,000 Cherokees were removed at gunpoint from their homes over three weeks and gathered together in camps, often with only the clothes on their backs.[8]

In 2004, Senator Sam Brownback (Republican of Kansas) introduced a joint resolution (Senate Joint Resolution 37) to "offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States" for past "ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian Tribes." The United States Senate has yet to take action on the measure.[8]

Irish Americans

Prejudice against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s. [9]

In the 1830’s in some rural areas riots broke out among rival labor teams between Irish and native American work teams competing for construction jobs.[9]

It was common for Irishmen to be discriminated against in social situations. [9]

After 1860 the Irish sang songs about signs reading "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY", about the issue of job discrimination.[9]

The media often stereotyped the Irish in
America as being boss-controlled, violent (both among themselves and with those of other ethnic groups), voting illegally, and prone to alcoholism.[9]

Chinese Americans

Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law passed on May 6, 1882, following 1880 revisions to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868.

The act excluded Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for 10 years. [10]

Most came from
Southern China looking for a better life; escaping a high rate of poverty. [10]

The Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot on October 24, 1871, when a mob of over 500 Caucasians entered Los Angeles' Chinatown to attack and eventually murder Chinese American residents of the city. Almost every resident was attacked or robbed. Estimates of the number of dead vary, but between 20 and 23 Chinese residents were killed. At the time, there were only 200 Chinese living in
Los Angeles [11]

"The dead Chinese in Los Angeles were hanging at three places near the heart of the downtown business section of the city; from the wooden awning over the sidewalk in front of a carriage shop; from the sides of two “prairie schooners” parked on the street around the corner from the carriage shop; and from the cross-beam of a wide gate leading into a lumberyard a few blocks away from the other two locations. One of the victims hung without his trousers and minus a finger on his left hand."[11]

The event was triggered by the accidental killing of Robert Thompson, a Caucasian man, who was caught in the cross-fire between two men arguing over the affections of a young woman. [11]

The underlying causes are generally considered to be economic. These root economic causes were the unstable economy after the American Civil War which led to high unemployment in
California and other Western American states. [11]

The man who actually shot Thompson escaped and very few of the rioters were punished. [11]

The Rock Springs Massacre, or Rock Springs Riot (sometimes known as the Rock Springs Attack), occurred on September 2, 1885, in the U.S. town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, in present day Sweetwater County. When there was a riot between white miners and Chinese miners. By the end of the riot, 28 Chinese miners were dead, and more than a dozen were wounded. 50 Chinese homes were burned.[12]

Japanese Americans

Japanese American Internment was the forced removal of approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans (62 percent of whom were United States citizens) from the west coast during World War II. [13]

While approximately 10,000 were able to relocate to other parts of the country, the remainder – roughly 110,000 men, women and children – were sent to hastily constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers" in remote portions of the nation. [13]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded." [13]

This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and
Washington, except for those in internment camps. Some compensation for property losses was paid in 1948, but most internees were unable to fully recover their losses.[13]

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation stated that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership"[13]

And beginning in 1990, the government paid reparations to SURVIVING internees. [13]

Internment was popular among many white farmers who resented the Japanese American farmers. These individuals saw internment as a convenient means of uprooting their Japanese American competitors.[13]

Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the Saturday Evening Post in 1942: "We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men ... If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we'd never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we don't want them back when the war ends, either.” [13]

The facilities met international laws, but still left much to be desired. Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living. [13]

Some Japanese Americans did question their American loyalties after the government removed them and their families from their homes and held them in internment camps, although such cases were isolated incidents and did not reflect the larger sentiment of the Japanese-American people, who remained loyal to the United States.[13]

During World War II, Colorado governor Ralph Lawrence Carr was the only elected official at the time to publicly apologize for the internment of American citizens. [13]

Japanese Americans served in World War II in the American forces.The 442nd Regimental Combat Team/100th Artillery Battalion is the most highly decorated unit in U.S. military history which were mainly Japanese Americans [13]

German Americans

German Americans who had been born overseas were the subject of some suspicion and discrimination during the war, although prejudice and sheer numbers meant they suffered as a group generally less. [14]

German-born
U.S. resident aliens to register with the federal government and restricted their travel and property ownership rights. [14]

Under the still active Alien Enemy Act of 1798, the
United States government interned nearly 11,000 German Americans between 1940 and 1948. Some of these were
United States citizens. Civil rights violations occurred. 500 were arrested without warrant. [14]

Others were held without charge for months or interrogated without benefit of legal counsel. Convictions were not eligible for appeal. An unknown number of "voluntary internees" joined their spouses and parents in the camps and were not permitted to leave.[14]

Italian Americans

In the 1890-1920 period Italian Americans were often stereotyped as being "violent" and "controlled by the Mafia". [15]

In the 1920s, many Americans used the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, in which two Italian anarchists were sentenced to death, to denounce Italian immigrants as anarchists and criminals. [15]

During the 1800s and early 20th century, Italian Americans were the one of the most likely groups to be lynched. [15]

In 1891, eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans were lynched due to their ethnicity and the suspicion of Italians being involved in the Mafia. This was the largest mass lynching in
US history.[15]

During World War II, in various parts of the country, the
U.S. government displayed signs that read, Don't Speak the Enemy's Language. Such signs designated the languages of the Axis powers, German, Japanese, and Italian, as "enemy languages". [19]

Shortly after the
U.S. declared war on the Axis powers, many Italian, Japanese and German citizens were interned. [15]

Mexican Americans

Mexican Americans also found themselves targeted by hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, which had a major influence in
Texas. [16]

In the 1940s, viciously racist imagery in newspapers and crime novels portrayed Mexican “zoot suiters” as disloyal "foreigners" or murderers attacking White-Anglo police officers.[16]

Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that decided that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.[17]

Mendez v. Westminster, was a 1947 court case that challenged racial segregation in
California schools. It its ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, in an en banc decision, held that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional.[18]

Part 1: http://www.progressiveu.org/014735-america-ethnocentrism-colonization

Part 2: http://www.progressiveu.org/015620-america-ethocentrism-religion

Sources & Notes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism [5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_history#Early_history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_supremacy#Nature [6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy [20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws [7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#Forced_removal [8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_American#Discrimination_and_prejudice [9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act [10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Massacre_of_1871 [11]