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Immigration from 1870 to 1920: Nativist Xenophobia and Persecution of Immigrants
G. Stolyarov II
G. Stolyarov II, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Jun 5, 2007 "Contribute content like this. Start Here."
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Xenophobia
1920
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Immigrants to the United States from 1870 to 1920 were not always welcomed. Many faced unjust and even violent persecution from well-connected nativist groups, who often acted out of nothing more than ignorance and prejudice.
No one expressed and condemned the irrationality of the xenophobia exhibited by the nativist groups against immigrants more vividly than Thomas Nast. His cartoon, ironically titled, "Pacific Chivalry: Encouragement to Chinese Immigration," portrays Nast's response to some of the most extreme forms of racism and nativism in the country at the time.
You see a California native whipping and pulling the hair of a defenseless Chinese immigrant. In the inscription in the background, you can barely see written some of the things that aid the abuser in his cruelty. The inscription reads: "Courts of justice closed to Chinese; extra taxes to Yellowjack."
What does this cartoon suggest about the means that Chinese and many other immigrants had to resist invasions of their rights and dignity? They had just about no means whatsoever. Nast recognized that many of these productive and peace-loving individuals were barred from resisting their inferior condition by small, well-organized activist groups connected with the legislature and prepared to use all means necessary, from the law to vigilante violence, to damage the immigrants. The American people were not opposed to immigration, but many powerful and well-connected elites of the time were.
Indeed, the xenophobia against immigrants sometimes reached horrific extremes. There was substantial discrimination against the Chinese in terms of wages and employment conditions in the West, but this passage by historian John Higham refers to some of the more brutal attacks on their freedoms.
"No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870s and 1880s. Lynching, boycotts, and mass expulsions...harassed the Chinese." (Higham 1963)
Of course, in order to make these actions seem more tolerable in their eyes, nativists tried to justify them by conceiving of Asian immigrants as inferior beings. They could back down somewhat and grant some degree of equality to foreign whites, but this would enable them to play a powerful race card which contained some vicious stereotypes. Anti-immigrant stereotypes were spread by many labor unionists, especially Samuel Gompers, who wrote that "both the intelligence and the prosperity of our working people are endangered by the present immigration. Cheap labor... ignorant labor...takes our jobs and cuts our wages."
There are numerous fallacies in Gompers's claims. Immigration creates jobs rather than destroying them. Immigrants did not steal jobs, but rather took work that few natives wanted. Half of immigrants were indeed unskilled, but the other half consisted of people just as, if not more than, educated and innovative than the native population. Indeed, without immigrants, American economic prosperity would have been cut by more than half.
It seems, however, that some debates in American history linger on for centuries. The immigration debate is one of them. Currently, as immigration restrictions in the past thirty years have been laxer than previously, we are experiencing a new massive influx of foreigners into this country. The benefits that these immigrants bring are even more obvious today than ever, but the nativists are still around to attempt to impose stricter quotas and border control measures. They are often still guided by the same fallacious arguments about immigrants stealing jobs or polluting the country's culture.
Novelist Stephen Vincent Benet offered a powerful response to nativism, relevant both during his time and today: "Remember that when you say, 'I will have none of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange,' you have denied America with that word."
Sources:
http://web.uccs.edu/~history/f...st153/immigrants.htm
http://www.bedfordstmartins.co...dules/mod20/main.htm
http://immigrants.harpweek.com/
http://nimbus.mysticseaport.or...s/immigration-0.html
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/bibs/immig.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/ed...ropean/wimmlink.html
http://dewey.chs.chico.k12.ca.us/bridging.html
http://www.edc.org/CCT/NDL/199...e/stan/immlinks.html
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wire.../listimmigratli.html
http://www.bcps.org/offices/li...ation/resources.html
http://www.pbs.org/newamerican...tml/amimm_pp403.html
http://www.ailf.org/pubed/pe_celeb_historical.asp
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Immigration/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nd...mmgnts/immgrnts.html
http://www.internationalchanne...n/ellis/process.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nd...ative_american3.html
http://mi.essortment.com/postcivilwarr_rrid.htm
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/civilwar/settlement.html
http://www.civilwarhome.com/irish.htm
http://www.marist.edu/summerscholars/97/modimm.htm
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/fe...migrnt/immigrnt.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/fe...mmgnts/immgrnts.html
http://internet.ggu.edu/univer...ibrary/histimmi.html
http://www.historychannel.com/ellisisland/index2.html
http://www.archives.gov/public...ation_records_1.html
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Immigration from 1870 to 1920: Nativist Xenophobia and Persecution of Immigrants
G. Stolyarov II
G. Stolyarov II, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Jun 5, 2007 "Contribute content like this. Start Here."
More:
Xenophobia
1920
Persecution
Lynching
Immigrants
tweet
Flag Post a comment
Immigrants to the United States from 1870 to 1920 were not always welcomed. Many faced unjust and even violent persecution from well-connected nativist groups, who often acted out of nothing more than ignorance and prejudice.
No one expressed and condemned the irrationality of the xenophobia exhibited by the nativist groups against immigrants more vividly than Thomas Nast. His cartoon, ironically titled, "Pacific Chivalry: Encouragement to Chinese Immigration," portrays Nast's response to some of the most extreme forms of racism and nativism in the country at the time.
You see a California native whipping and pulling the hair of a defenseless Chinese immigrant. In the inscription in the background, you can barely see written some of the things that aid the abuser in his cruelty. The inscription reads: "Courts of justice closed to Chinese; extra taxes to Yellowjack."
What does this cartoon suggest about the means that Chinese and many other immigrants had to resist invasions of their rights and dignity? They had just about no means whatsoever. Nast recognized that many of these productive and peace-loving individuals were barred from resisting their inferior condition by small, well-organized activist groups connected with the legislature and prepared to use all means necessary, from the law to vigilante violence, to damage the immigrants. The American people were not opposed to immigration, but many powerful and well-connected elites of the time were.
Indeed, the xenophobia against immigrants sometimes reached horrific extremes. There was substantial discrimination against the Chinese in terms of wages and employment conditions in the West, but this passage by historian John Higham refers to some of the more brutal attacks on their freedoms.
"No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870s and 1880s. Lynching, boycotts, and mass expulsions...harassed the Chinese." (Higham 1963)
Of course, in order to make these actions seem more tolerable in their eyes, nativists tried to justify them by conceiving of Asian immigrants as inferior beings. They could back down somewhat and grant some degree of equality to foreign whites, but this would enable them to play a powerful race card which contained some vicious stereotypes. Anti-immigrant stereotypes were spread by many labor unionists, especially Samuel Gompers, who wrote that "both the intelligence and the prosperity of our working people are endangered by the present immigration. Cheap labor... ignorant labor...takes our jobs and cuts our wages."
There are numerous fallacies in Gompers's claims. Immigration creates jobs rather than destroying them. Immigrants did not steal jobs, but rather took work that few natives wanted. Half of immigrants were indeed unskilled, but the other half consisted of people just as, if not more than, educated and innovative than the native population. Indeed, without immigrants, American economic prosperity would have been cut by more than half.
It seems, however, that some debates in American history linger on for centuries. The immigration debate is one of them. Currently, as immigration restrictions in the past thirty years have been laxer than previously, we are experiencing a new massive influx of foreigners into this country. The benefits that these immigrants bring are even more obvious today than ever, but the nativists are still around to attempt to impose stricter quotas and border control measures. They are often still guided by the same fallacious arguments about immigrants stealing jobs or polluting the country's culture.
Novelist Stephen Vincent Benet offered a powerful response to nativism, relevant both during his time and today: "Remember that when you say, 'I will have none of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange,' you have denied America with that word."
Sources:
http://web.uccs.edu/~history/f...st153/immigrants.htm
http://www.bedfordstmartins.co...dules/mod20/main.htm
http://immigrants.harpweek.com/
http://nimbus.mysticseaport.or...s/immigration-0.html
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/bibs/immig.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/ed...ropean/wimmlink.html
http://dewey.chs.chico.k12.ca.us/bridging.html
http://www.edc.org/CCT/NDL/199...e/stan/immlinks.html
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wire.../listimmigratli.html
http://www.bcps.org/offices/li...ation/resources.html
http://www.pbs.org/newamerican...tml/amimm_pp403.html
http://www.ailf.org/pubed/pe_celeb_historical.asp
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Immigration/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nd...mmgnts/immgrnts.html
http://www.internationalchanne...n/ellis/process.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nd...ative_american3.html
http://mi.essortment.com/postcivilwarr_rrid.htm
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/civilwar/settlement.html
http://www.civilwarhome.com/irish.htm
http://www.marist.edu/summerscholars/97/modimm.htm
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/fe...migrnt/immigrnt.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/fe...mmgnts/immgrnts.html
http://internet.ggu.edu/univer...ibrary/histimmi.html
http://www.historychannel.com/ellisisland/index2.html
http://www.archives.gov/public...ation_records_1.html
123
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