History lesson for Nikki Haley: 5 times America was definitely racist

GOP Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley recently set the cat among the pigeons when she claimed that America had “never been a racist country” and said – clearly channelling her inner Virat Kohli – that “America’s intent was to do the right thing”.

Haley defended the remarks in a CNN town hall, moderated by Jake Tapper, that while she had to deal with “plenty of racism” as a daughter of Indian immigrants growing up in South Carolina, her parents never said they “live in a racist country”.

She said: “When you look it said, ‘all men are created equal,’ I think the intent was to do the right thing. Now, did they have to go fix it along the way? Yes, but I don’t think the intent was ever that we were going to be a racist country. The intent was everybody was going to be created equally.”

While one understands Haley’s remarks, and that America has tried to fight its inherently institutional racist tendencies, there are too many instances in history when America was openly, de jure and de facto, racist. So, for Haley, and others, here is a little trip down memory lane.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

Bruce Lee changed the stereotype of the effete Asian male for a lot of Americans. His writings also inspired one of the best martial arts shows onTV titled Warrior . The basic premise of the show focused on a martial artist making his way in Chinatown in San Fracisco amid the Tong Wars, set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was approved in 1882 by US Congress.

The act provided a 10-year ban on Chinese labourers immigrating to the US and it was the first time, federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group based on their ethnicity. The act was extended by the Geary Act, an extension that was made permanent in 1902 and required each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence, without which they’d face deportation. The act was condemned by US Congress in 2011-12 and the Senate and House both passed resolutions “committed to preserve civil rights”.

The American Civil War

Claiming a country isn’t inherently racist, is a tad hard when half of it is willing to go to war to enforce slavery. The American Civil War was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States. The war lasted four years, until the Union defeated the Confederates and in the end slavery was abolished nationwide. As the war drew to a close, the North states made changes in their Constutition that came to be known as the Civil War Amendments that:-

1) Abolished slavery

2) Guaranteed equal rights and “equal protection under the law”

3) Allowed black men to vote

These later became part of the US Constitution. However, it wasn’t until 1920 that black women were given the right to vote. As an aside, the Republic of India, that came into existence in 1947, started off with universal suffragette where everyone of eligible age were allowed to vote.

The Jim Crow Laws

The South might have lost the war, but it wasn’t ready to give up racism very easily. The Jim Crow Laws referred to a set of laws that effectively set up segregation based on skin colour. Under the laws, there were separate trains, separate schools and separate entrances in public buildings for white and black people, the de jure segregation lasted till the 1970s.

Black schools would often receive inferior lab equipment and discarded books. They would often be in dilapidated buildings. Major League Baseball was white only with African-American playing in the “Negro Leagues”. Even Hollywood had ‘all-Negro films’.

African-Americans were denied the right to vote, with Southern states setting up hurdles like poll taxes, literacy tests, and property qualifications to reduce the number of eligible African-American voters. The fallout of that continues till this day where, since 1776, America has seen only one non-white POTUS: Barack Obama.

The Dotbusters

Different ethnic groups have faced different forms of racism in America, and members of the Indian community have also bore the brunt including racist rants about immigrants coming and taking over their jobs. One of the more newsworthy events took place in New Jersey between 1975 and 1993 by a group who called them the Dotsbusters, that targeted members of the Indian community.

A letter published by the incendiary group in The Jersey Journal read: “”I’m writing about your article during July about the abuse of Indian People. Well I’m here to state the other side. I hate them, if you had to live near them, you would also. We are an organization called the Dotbusters. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I’m walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties… We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped.”

One incident involved a grievously fatal assault on Navroze Mody, an Indian of Parsi origin. His father later brought charges against Hoboken police for indifference to acts of violence. The incidents were largely one-side until members of the Patel community started to fight back in several boroughs. In 1991, 58 hate crimes were reported against Indians in New Jersey. The incidents came into the limelight again after a “humour” column by Joel Stein on Indian immigrants that led to a public apology from both the author and Time magazine.

Forced Latino Deportations

While Latino-American discrimination has existed since the Mexican-American War in 1848, mobs have targeted Spanish speakers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were lynched during California’s Gold Rush where Josefa Segovia was falsely accused of murdering a white man and lynched on the streets.

During the Great Depression, anti-Mexican sentiment spiked with two million Mexicans forcibly deported even though 60% were estimated to be American citizens.

Called ‘repatriations’, there was nothing voluntary about them with private employers driving their employees to the border and kicking them out. Thes state of Colorado ordered all Mexicans – euphemism for Spanish-speaking folks – to leave the state in 1936 and even blockaded its southern border to prevent them returning.

Meanwhile, in 1936, the Eisenhower administration carried out Operation Wetback when 1.3 million Mexicans – many of them legal American citizens – were forcibly deported. As historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez pointed out to CNN: “Operation Wetback was lawless; it was arbitrary; it was based on a lot of xenophobia. And it resulted in sizable large-scale violations of people’s rights, including the forced deportation of U.S. citizens.”