Beware The Swarthy!

Title: America For Americans

Rating: 5 Stars

There is a hallowed tradition in the US of celebrating immigration. There’s the Statue of Liberty and it’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There’s the basic mythology of opportunity, that you can come here with nothing and if you work hard you can eventually make your own way. On a personal level, for the last several years, I’ve been attending Seattle’s Independence Day naturalization ceremony, where hundreds of delighted and excited people from dozens of countries, all waving little American flags, proudly recite the citizenship oath. It always leaves me moved.

Yet, there is another, not so hallowed, tradition of anti-immigration. There is a thread constantly running through our nation’s history of hating the ‘other’. These ‘other’ people are lazy, dumb, thieves, rapists, murderers, and will not only never assimilate with us ‘real’ Americans, but are actually actively looking to take it over from us.

And when I say throughout our history, I really do mean it. One group of ‘swarthy’ immigrants refused to learn English. They lived on their own without even attempting to assimilate. Their immigration numbers, in conjunction with their apparently shockingly high birth rate, appeared set to overrun a state.  In fact, the English word foreigner became a synonym for them. The state began to keep a registry of these immigrants and  required them to take a US loyalty oath upon arrival.

These people are (of course!) Germans during the eighteenth century. The state was Pennsylvania. One of the most ardent anti-German politicians was that great founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Eventually, as the Germans settled on the fringes of the frontier and began to fight the Native Americans whose lands they were encroaching upon, the tide began to turn and the English settlers began to recognize them as white. After all, if you’re English and you need to pick a team between Germans and Native Americans, it’s pretty clear who you’re going to choose, right?

This sets the tone for the rest of history. After the Germans came a wave of Irish fleeing the Potato Famine. Germans were now considered good solid Anglo-Saxon stock along with the English. The Irish, being Celtic, were clearly a different, much inferior type of European. Although still above the Native Americans, and heaven forbid, African Americans, they were looked upon with contempt.

After the Irish came the most decidedly non-white Chinese. According to the railroad companies, their physiognomy and temperament made the Chinese uniquely qualified to work and die in large numbers in virtual slavery building the railroad.  Coming in large numbers to California, predictably enough a backlash grew against them. In my city of Seattle, the hundred or so Chinese that were living there were such a threat that they were driven away in a white riot. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1893 outlawed immigration for an entire ethnic group and explicitly made Chinese immigrants ineligible for citizenship.

To me, even sadder is the treatment of earlier immigrants to the coming new wave. For example, the Irish generally held a special contempt for Chinese immigrants. This was a combination of the two groups fighting for the same horrible jobs for nothing wages and the fact that the Irish, after so long being the victim of discrimination, finally had at last a target of their own.

This is also reflected in the early labor unions. You’d hope that labor unions would fight for the right of all workers struggling to eke out a living. However, nearly all labor unions explicitly excluded members of either the most recent immigrant group and/or immigrants that were considered from a then ‘shit hole’ country.

The Southern and Eastern Europeans began to come in waves. This time the Italians, Poles, and Russians were looked upon as being inferior European stock. It was the same old, same old. They couldn’t speak the language, are criminals, won’t assimilate, and will take our jobs.

Criticism wasn’t just based upon nation of origin. Just in case you think that our fear of Islam is a new thing, America has a long history of discriminating by religion. In fact, that was one of the major concerns with the Irish and the Italians. Being Catholic, it was believed that they would take their orders from the Pope and could never be trusted to be loyal Americans. Beliefs such as these led to the Know Nothing Party. It got large enough that there able to be considered a serious third party for a bit.

No discussion of this would be complete without talking about the Japanese. Coming from the ‘orient’, they were considered as suspicious as the Chinese. Believing that having Japanese heritage made you give your first loyalty to the Emperor, they were interned in World War II. This was despite the fact that 2/3 of those interned were US citizens.

Of course, then there are the Mexican / Central American immigrants. Californian farms and low wage companies desperately need immigrant workers. In the 1930s, when work dried up, 20% of the Mexican population in the US was forcibly expelled. It’s estimated that 60% of that number were actually US citizens.

Later there was the Bracero program, which was a legal means for Mexicans to do seasonal work in the US and then go back home to Mexico. Something close to 400,000 Mexicans a year used this program. With the Immigration Act of 1965, it discontinued the Bracero program and allowed a maximum of 20,000 immigrants from any one country. At the same time, it seriously beefed up US / Mexico border security, thus making it difficult to easily cross the border. This paradoxically led to increased illegal immigration because, since there were still jobs to be filled, Mexicans were incentivized to sneak across the border for the wages, and since the border was so secure, would stay in the US instead of going back to Mexico as they used to.

As you read Lee’s book, you see the exact same arguments used against each new wave of immigration. In fact, you even see the exact same words. There are references to swarthy Germans, swarthy Jews, swarthy Italians, and yes, even now, swarthy Middle Easterners. Seemingly innocent, swarthy, as used in immigration debates, is such a loaded term denoting darkness, grittiness, and dirtiness. It is an exotic sounding shorthand word for ‘otherness’.

In each case, each wave of immigration has faced the exact same set of accusations and it does not seem to matter that these accusations has been disproven each time.

Each immigrant just wants to have their chance for success. All realize that the path to success in America is learning the language and adapting to American ways. Even if the first generation has trouble adapting, they inevitably encourage their children to become ‘real’ Americans.

Why is this so hard to understand?