3.1 Racism
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Racism
Racism in the United States traces the attitudes, laws, practices and actions which discriminate against various groups in the United States based on their race or ethnicity; while most white Americans enjoy legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights which have at various times been denied to members of other ethnic or minority groups. European Americans, particularly affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, are said to have enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, bankruptcy, and criminal procedure throughout United States history.
Racism has manifested itself in a variety of ways, including genocide, slavery, segregation, Native American reservations, Native American boarding schools, immigration and naturalization laws, and internment camps. African Americans in particular have faced restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms throughout much of United States history. Native Americans have suffered genocide, forced removals, and massacres, and they continue to face discrimination. In addition, East, South, and Southeast Asians along with Pacific Islanders have also been discriminated against. Hispanics have continuously experienced racism in the United States despite the fact that many of them have European ancestry. Middle Eastern groups such as Jews, Arabs, and Iranians continuously face discrimination in the United States, and as a result, some people who belong to these groups do not identify as, and are not perceived to be, white.
In chapter 2, we covered common American stereotypes of Latinx, East Asian, Indigenous, and Black/African American individuals. In the following section, we will outline how anti-Middle Eastern (including Jewish and Arab peoples) and anti-Asian sentiment (focusing mainly on the Chinese experience) has occurred historically and of late.
Anti-Middle Eastern Sentiment
Anti-Middle Eastern racism has a long history in the United States, although it had generally been limited to Jews until recent decades. It is suggested by Leo Rosten that as soon as they left the boat, Jews were subject to racism from the port immigration authorities. The derogatory term kike was adopted when referring to Jews (because they often could not write so they may have signed their immigration papers with circles – or kikel in Yiddish). In early films, such as Cohen's Advertising Scheme (1904, silent), Jews were stereotyped as "scheming merchants," often with exaggerated West Asian racial features such as big, hooked noses, big lips, small eyes, black curly hair, and olive and/or brown-colored skin.
From the 1910s, Southern Jewish communities were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, who objected to Jewish immigration, and often used "The Jewish Banker" in their propaganda. In 1915, Leo Frank was lynched in Georgia after being convicted of rape and sentenced to death (his punishment was commuted to life imprisonment). The second Ku Klux Klan, which grew enormously in the early 1920s by promoting "100% Americanism", focused its hatred on Jews, as well as Catholics and African Americans.
In 1993, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee confronted The Walt Disney Company about anti-Arab racist content in its animated film Aladdin. At first, Disney denied any problems but eventually relented and changed two lines in the opening song. Members of the ADC were still unhappy with the portrayal of Arabic characters and the referral to the Middle East as "barbaric".
Since 9/11, anti-Middle Eastern racism has risen dramatically. A man in Houston, Texas, who was shot and wounded after an assailant accused him of "blowing up the country", and four immigrants shot and killed by a man named Larme Price, who confessed to killing them as revenge for the September 11 attacks. Price said he was motivated by a desire to kill people of Arab descent after the attacks. Although Price described his victims as Arabs, only one was from an Arab country. This appears to be a trend; because of stereotypes of Arabs, several non-Arab, non-Muslim groups were subjected to attacks in the wake of 9/11, including several Sikh men attacked for wearing their religiously-mandated turban. Price's mother, Leatha Price, said that her son's anger at Arabs was a matter of mental illness, not ethnic hatred.
Anti-Asian Sentiment
Asian Americans, including those of East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian descent, have experienced racism since the first major groups of Chinese immigrants arrived in America. The Naturalization Act of 1790 made Asians ineligible for citizenship. First-generation immigrants, children of immigrants, and Asians adopted by non-Asian families are still impacted by discrimination. During the Industrial Revolution in the United States, labor shortages in the mining and rail industries were prevalent. Chinese immigrant labor was often used to fill this gap, most notably with the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, leading to large-scale Chinese immigration. These Chinese immigrants were seen as taking the jobs of whites for cheaper pay, and the phrase Yellow Peril, which predicted the demise of Western Civilization as a result of Chinese immigrants, gained popularity.
In 1871, one of the largest lynchings in American history was committed against Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California. It would go on to become known as the Chinese massacre of 1871. The 1879 Constitution of the California prohibited the employment of Chinese people by state and local governments, as well as by businesses that were incorporated in California. Also, the 1879 constitution delegated power to local governments in California to remove Chinese people from within their borders. The federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years after thousands of Chinese immigrants had come to the American West. Several mob attacks against Chinese people took place, including the Rock Springs massacre of 1885 in Wyoming in which at least 28 Chinese miners were killed and 15 injured, and the Hells Canyon massacre of 1887 in Oregon where 34 Chinese miners were killed.
Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019, has led to an increase in acts and displays of sinophobia as well as prejudice, xenophobia, discrimination, violence, and racism against people of East Asian, North Asian and Southeast Asian descent and appearance around the world. With the spread of the pandemic and formation of hotspots, such as those in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, discrimination against people from these hotspots has been reported.
According to a June 2020 Pew Research study, 58% of Asian Americans and 45% of African Americans believe that racist views toward them had increased since the pandemic. There were a few thousand incidences of xenophobia and racism against Asian Americans between 28 January and 24 February 2020, according to a tally compiled by Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. An online reporting forum called "Stop AAPI Hate" recorded "650 direct reports of discrimination against primarily Asian Americans" between 18 and 26 March 2020, this later increased to 1,497 reports by 15 April 2020, and most targets were of Chinese (40%) and Korean (16%) descents. According to a WHYY-FM report (21 April 2020), incidents of anti-Asian racism, including discrimination, racial slurs and violent attacks, especially towards Chinese Americans, were caused both by white Americans and African-Americans; most cases remain unreported to the authorities.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump frequently referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese Virus" and the "China Virus" in an attempt to point to its origin, a term considered to be anti-Chinese and racist. He later argued this was "not racist at all" after lawmakers including Elizabeth Warren raised objections about the statement. Trump also stated on Twitter, on 23 March 2020, that the coronavirus was not Asian Americans’ fault and their community should be protected. Trump brushed off the alleged use of the derogatory term "Kung Flu" by a White House official to refer to COVID-19 when asked by a reporter during a media session on 18 March 2020. Eventually he pulled back on the "Chinese Virus" name due to Asian communities facing increased number of racist taunts and incidents as the illness spread across the U.S. however, at his Tulsa, Oklahoma rally on 20 June, Trump referred to the virus as "Kung Flu." On 14 March 2020, more than 200 civil rights groups in the United States demanded that the House of Representatives and Senate leadership publicly denounce the growing amount of anti-Asian racism related to the pandemic and take "tangible steps to counter the hysteria" around the coronavirus, offering the passage of a joint resolution denouncing the racism and xenophobia as one solution.
Additional recommended resource: We Need To Talk About Anti-Asian Hate