AMERICA’S HISTORY OF INTOLERANCE
A prominent American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English…..The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages…Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”
Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin. And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750’s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the “most stupid of their nation.”
And still earlier in Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish had bred discount, as their penchant for squatting on choice real estate ran headlong against the colony’s founders, the Penn family, and their genteel notions about who should own what.
Often the disdain for the foreign was inflamed by religion. Boston’s Puritans hanged several Friends after a Bay Colony ban on Quakerism. In Virginia, the Anglicans arrested Baptists.
The greatest scorn was generally reserved for Catholics – usually meaning Irish, French, Spanish and Italians. Generations of white American Protestants resented newly arriving “Papists, and even in colonial Maryland, a supposed haven for them, Roman Catholics were nonetheless forbidden to vote and hold public office.
By 1790, with the United States Constitution firmly in place, the first federal citizenship law restricted naturalization to “free white persons” who had been in the country for two years. That requirement was later pushed back to five years and, in 1798, to 14 years.
Back then, the French warranted the most suspicion, but there were other worrisome “aliens”. A wave of “wild Irish” refugees was thought to harbor dangerous radicals. Harsh “anti-coolie” laws later singled out the Chinese. And, of course, the millions of “involuntary” immigrants from Africa and their offspring were regarded merely as persons “held to service”.
It is very important that own-up to and accept our history. We do need to be reminded that we have not always been accepting of those who want to live here. Unfortunately, there are still many folks who still find it difficult to accept those who seem different to them. We all need help and kindness every day.
Some good perspective and humbling reminders of UNITED States of America. We have grown in civility but still have a way to go. God Bless us all .
What’s to gain by highlighting this evolution of American intolerance? We, as a nation, have progressed to where it’s not even a Thought. meanwhile 80% of the non-western world still hold deep racial/religious divides. Immigrants continue to flock to USA for a Reason, Americans hardly have a choice to seek refugee in any other country that matches our standard of living.
God bless America land of the free and the brave