the immigration acts of 1917 and 1924 asian americans and the law dr. steiner

The Immigration Acts of 1917 and

1924

Asian Americans and the LawDr. Steiner

Carroll D. WrightMassachusetts Commissioner of Labor Statistics, 1881

The Canadian French are the Chinese of the Eastern United States.

They care nothing for our institutions. . . .They do not come to make a home among us. . . . Their purpose is merely to sojourn a few years as aliens. . . And, when they have gathered out of us what will satisfy their ends, to get them from whence they came, and bestow it there. They are a horde of industrial invaders, not a stream of stable settlers.

Cesare Lombroso

Receding hairline, forehead wrinkles, bumpy face, broad nose,fleshy lips, sloping shoulders, long arms, and pointy fingers

New Physiognomy (1866)

On the left, Florence Nightingale; on the right, Bridget McBruiser.

The Jukes

Richard L. Dugdale,The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity (1877) Seven generations of petty criminals, prostitutes,

and paupers Traced back to “Margaret, the Mother of

Criminals” Arthur H. Estabrook, The Jukes in 1915

The family was still “unredeemed” and beset by “feeblemindedness, indolence, licentiousness, and dishonesty”

William Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe (1899) Ripley divided European peoples into three

sub-categories of the Caucasian race: Nordic Alpine Mediterranean

Ripley focused on the cephalic index (measurement of head size)

William Z. Ripley,“Races in the United States” (1908)

It is not alone the rapid increase in our immigration which merits attention. It is also the radical change in its character, in the source from whence it comes. Whereas, until about twenty years ago, our immigrants were drawn from the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic populations of northwestern Europe, they have swarmed over here in rapidly growing proportions since that time from Mediterranean, Slavic, and Oriental sources. A quarter of a century ago, two-thirds of our immigration was truly Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon in origin. At the present time, less than one-sixth comes from this source.

David Starr Jordan, The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races Through the Survival of the Unfit (1902)

The blood which is “thicker than water” is the symbol of race unity. In this sense the blood of the people concerned is at once the cause and the result of the deeds recorded in their history. For example, wherever an Englishman goes, he carries with him the elements of English history. It is a British deed which he does, British history that he makes.

David Starr Jordan, The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races Through the Survival of the Unfit (1902)

Thus, too, a Jew is a Jew in all ages and climes, and his deeds everywhere bear the stamp of Jewish individuality. A Greek is a Greek; a Chinaman remains a Chinaman. In like fashion the race traits color all history made by Tartars, or negroes, or Malays.

Madison GrantThe Passing of the Great Race in America (1916)

Grant’s book strongly influenced immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation policies in the United States.

He popularized “Nordic” race theory in the United States.

He served as the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League from 1922 to his death in 1937; he provided statistics for the Immigration Act of 1924 to set the quotas on immigrants from “less-desirable” countries.

The Passing of the Great Race in America

In dealing with European populations the best method of determining race has been found to lie in a comparison of proportions of the skull, the so-called cephalic index. This is the ratio of maximum length to maximum width taken at the widest part of the skull above the ears. Skulls with an index of 75 or less, that is, when the width is three-fourths or less than the length, are considered dolichocephalic, or long skulls. Skulls of an index of 80 or over are round skulls, or brachycephalic.


Intermediate indices, between 75 and 80, are considered mesocephalic. These are cranial indices. To allow for the flesh on living specimens, about two per cent is to be added to the index, and the result is the cephalic index.


This cephalic index, though an extremely important if not the controlling unit character, is, nevertheless, but a single character and must be checked up with other somatological traits. Normally, a long skull is associated with a long face, and a round skull with a round face.

The use of this test, the cephalic index, enables us to divide the great bulk of the European populations into three distinct subspecies of man, one northern and one southern, both dolichocephalic or characterized by a long skull, and a central subspecies which is brachycephalic, or characterized by a round skull.


The first is the Nordic or Baltic subspecies. This race is long skulled, very tall, fair skinned, with blond or brown hair and light colored eyes. The Nordics inhabit the countries around the North and Baltic Seas, and include not only the great Scandinavian and Teutonic groups, but also other early peoples who first appear in southern Europe and in Asia as representatives of Aryan language and culture.


The second is the dark Mediterranean or Iberian subspecies, occupying the shores of the inland sea, and extending along the Atlantic coast until it reaches the Nordic species. It also spreads far east into southern Asia. It is long skulled like the Nordic race, but the absolute size of the skull is less. The eyes and hair are very dark or black, and the skin more or less swarthy. The stature is stunted in comparison to that of the Nordic race and the musculature and bony framework weak.


The third is the Alpine subspecies occupying all central and eastern Europe, and extending through Asia Minor to the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs. The Armenoids constitute an Alpine subdivision and represent the ancestral type of this race which remained in the mountains and high plateaux of Anatolia and western Asia. The Alpines are round skulled, of medium height and sturdy build, both as to skeleton and muscles. The coloration of both hair and eyes was originally very dark and still tends strongly in that direction, but many light colored eyes, especially gray, are now found in the Alpine populations of western Europe.

“Nordic Theory”

Grant divided the human species into primarily three distinct races: Caucasoids (based in Europe), Negroids (based in Africa), Mongoloids (based in Asia).

“Nordic Theory”

Grant further subdivided Caucasoids into three groups: Nordics (who inhabited Scandinavia, northern

Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Flanders, parts of northern France, and northern Poland),

Alpines (whose territory stretched from central France through Switzerland, northern Italy, Austria, southern Germany, southern Poland, central Russia, and into Central Asia),

Mediterraneans (who inhabited southern France, the Iberian peninsula, southern Italy, Greece, and parts of Wales).


The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers, and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.


What the Melting Pot actually does in practice, can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican, and which is now engaged in demonstrating its incapacity for self-government. The world has seen many such mixtures of races, and the character of a mongrel race is only just beginning to be understood at its true value.


The lowering of the birth rate among the most valuable classes, while the birth rate of the lower classes remains unaffected, is a frequent phenomenon of prosperity. Such a change becomes extremely injurious to the race if unchecked, unless nature is allowed to maintain by her own cruel devices the relative numbers of the different classes in their due proportions.


To attack race suicide by encouraging indiscriminate breeding is not only futile, but is dangerous if it leads to an increase in the undesirable elements. What is needed in the community most of all, is an increase in the desirable classes, which are of superior type physically, intellectually, and morally, and not merely an increase in the absolute numbers of the population.

Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)

If white civilization goes down, the white race is irretrievably ruined. It will be swamped by the triumphant colored races, who will obliterate the white man by elimination or absorption. What has taken place in Central Asia, once a white and now a brown or yellow land, will take place in Australasia, Europe, and America. Not to-day, nor yet to-morrow; perhaps not for generations; but surely in the end. If the present drift be not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order, the doom will sooner or later overtake us all.

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy

Were the white world to-day really convinced of the supreme importance of race-values, how long would it take to stop debasing immigration, reform social abuses that are killing out the fittest strains, and put an end to the feuds which have just sent us through hell and threaten to send us promptly back again?

The Great Gatsby (1925) “Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently.

“I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read “The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”

“Why no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.” “Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it.

The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be–will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” . . . “Well these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom…. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”

The Great Gatsby (1925)

“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

“You ought to live in California–” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and–” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “–And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization–oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”

Sir Francis Galton and Eugenics

In Hereditary Genius (1869), Galton argued that men of exceptional ability tended to come from a small number of Anglo-Saxon families.

Galton also graded races, declaring, for example, that “the average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own.”

Galton’s racism did not merely extend to non-white races but “inferior” white races as well.

Galton and Eugenics

Galton invented the term “eugenics” in 1883, which he defined as “the study of the agencies under social control that seek to improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.”

Galton's eugenics gave a scientific basis for the belief that those from the best race, class, and family should rule and breed.

The Eugenics movement found its strongest proponents in the United States and Germany

The Eugenics Movement

Charles Davenport, an American eugenics leader, defined Eugenics as the “the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding.”

The Eugenics message was that those with the richest genetic inheritance should mate and reproduce while those “born to be a burden to others” should be discouraged or prevented from having children.

In practice this meant encouraging whites of northern and western European background to have more children and working to reduce the immigration of southern and eastern Europeans, along with Africans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders, to virtually zero.

Contagion: The Spread of Eugenics Throughout American Popular Culture in the 1920s

Race Betterment Foundation

Founded by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (his brother invented the corn flake) in 1914

First Race Betterment Conference called for creation of super race “We have wonderful new races of horses, cows,

and pigs. Why should we not have a new and improved race of men?”

Kellogg wanted “the white races of Europe . . .to establish a Race of Human Thoroughbreds.”

an eye to racial progress, encouraging the reproduction of the “best blood,” and discouraging or preventing the reproduction of its worse strains

Eugenics Society of America,“Fitter Family” Winner, Texas State Fair

Eugenics Society of America,“Fitter Family” Winner, Kansas State Fair

Immigration restriction

Anti-Miscegenatio

nEugenic Sterilization

Anti-Miscegenation Laws

Forty-two states had at one time an anti-miscegenation law that prohibited marriages between whites and non-whites

Eugenicists lobbied for the passage of such laws as the 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity in Virginia Lothrop Stoddard: ”I consider such legislation . . .

to be of the highest value and greatest necessity in order that the purity of the white race be safeguarded from possibility of contamination with nonwhite blood…. This is a matter of both national and racial life and death.”

Eugenics and Immigration Laws In 1911, Immigration Restriction League President

Prescott Hall asked his former Harvard classmate Charles Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) for assistance to influence Congressional debate on immigration. Davenport recommended a survey to determine the national origins of “hereditary defectives” in American prisons, mental hospitals and other charitable institutions. Davenport appointed ERO colleague Harry Laughlin to manage the research program. Paul Lombardo, Eugenics: Laws Restricting Immigration

Harry Laughlin

The compulsory sterilization of certain degenerates is therefore designed as a eugenical agency complementary to the segregation of the socially unfit classes, and to the control of the immigration of those who carry defective germ-plasm.

Eugenics and Immigration Laws In 1920, Laughlin appeared before the U.S. House

of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. Using data for the U.S. Census Bureau and a survey of the number of foreign-born persons in jails, prisons and reformatories, he argued that the “American” gene pool was being polluted by a rising tide of intellectually and morally defective immigrants – primarily from eastern and southern Europe. Paul Lombardo, Eugenics: Laws Restricting Immigration

Harry Laughlin, Analysis of America’s Modern Melting Pot (1922)

Eugenics and Immigration Laws

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, was designed to halt the immigration of Italians and eastern European Jews, whose numbers had grown markedly during the period from 1900 to 1920. The method was simply to scale the number of immigrants from each country in proportion to their percentage of the U.S. population in the 1890 census – when northern and western Europeans were the dominant immigrants. Under the new law, the quota of southern and eastern Europeans was reduced from 45% to 15%. Paul Lombardo, Eugenics: Laws Restricting Immigration

Erika Lee, “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924"

How did the effort to exclude Chinese influence the restriction and exclusion of other immigrant groups? Provided the legal architecture for the 1924 Act Introduced a “gatekeeping ideology” and

legalized the need to restrict, exclude, and deport undesirable immigrants

Erika Lee, “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924”

How did the racialization of Chinese as excludable aliens contribute and intersect with the racialization of other Asian, southern and eastern European, and Mexican immigrants? Whiteness and immigration restriction Chinese and “Americans” Anti-Asian nativism became model

Racial inferiority and racial unassimilability “The Chinese of Europe”

Erika Lee, “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924” How did the Chinese Exclusion Act itself

set significant precedents for the admission, deportation, documentation, and surveillance of both new arrivals and immigrant communities within the United States? Bureaucracy: Inspectors for Chinese

immigrants were the first federal immigration officials

Identification and Recording of Immigrants: Certificates of Residence and Certificates of Identity

Immigration Act of 1917 Section 3 lists “classes of aliens” that

would be excluded from the United States. Which of these classes seem drawn from the Chinese Exclusion example?

Asiatic Barred Zone Persons who are natives not possessed by

the United States adjacent to the Continent of Asia, situate couth of the twentieth parallel latitude north. . .

Barred immigration from all of Asia, except for China, Japan, and the Philippines (and Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants couldn’t naturalize)

Immigration Act of 1917

Section 3 at the bottom of 876 also lists exceptions. Are these exceptions influenced by the Chinese Exclusion example?

Immigration Act of 1917 What happens to “skilled labor”?

Immigration Act of 1924 When President Calvin Coolidge signed the

1924 act, he said, “America must remain American.” What did he mean by this comment?

Los Angeles Times headline, April 13, 1924

NORDIC VICTORY IS SEEN IN DRASTIC RESTRICTIONS


The quotas were based upon the 1890 census, although more recent censuses were available. Why use the 1890 census?

The 1920 census would have permitted 42,000 Italian and 31,000 Polish immigrants under a 2% quota; using the 1890 census would allow 4,000 Italians and 6,000 Poles.

Immigration Act of 1924, sec. 11 The annual quota of any nationality shall

be 2 per centum of the number of foreign-born individuals of such nationality resident in continental United States as determined by the United States census of 1890, but the minimum quota of any nationality shall be 100.

Immigration Quotas Based Upon National Origin (Ngai 74) China 100* Germany 25,957 Great Britain 65,721 Greece 307 India 100* Italy 5,802 Japan 100* Spain 252

Immigration Act of 1924 What’s the difference between quota and

non-quota immigrants?


In section 13(c), all aliens “ineligible for citizenship” are excluded except for some stated exceptions such as those eligible under section 4's “non-quota immigrant’s provisions.” Which immigrant groups were the likely target of this provision?

Ngai, The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law Ngai argues that the Immigration Act of

1924 “comprised a constellation of reconstructed racial categories.” How so?

the immigration acts of 1917 and 1924 asian americans and the law dr. steiner

Documents