The KKK in US Legislation #100YearsAgoToday #SundaySalon
Happy Sunday! Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz. Check out her post and the links to see what other bloggers have been up to in the last week.
This is my third post inspired by the book A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them by Timothy Egan.
I can tell this is a popular book because my book review is currently the most visited post on my blog, surpassing the usual post that gets attention in May (the summary of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that students find helpful at the end of the school year).
I also wrote a post where I explored what I learned about how the KKK operated in Indiana, particularly Tipton County, where my grandfather got involved.
Today, I want to write about what happened one hundred years ago on this date. The United States Congress enacted the Immigration Act of 1924, giving the Klan exactly what they wanted, discriminatory policies based on skin colors and religions.
Strict quotas on shunned countries slashed new arrivals from eastern and southern Europe to a bare trickle, shutting out Jews and olive-skinned Catholics. The new law made it impossible for someone from Japan to come to America legally, and tightened the already harsh ban on Chinese. Africa was shut out as well. After all the speeches and essays about eugenics and human imperfections, after the crusades against the criminality of the mongrel hordes, the hooded order got everything it wanted. (p. 171, A Fever in the Heartland)
The Wikipedia article covers some of the unintended consequences of legislation that goes against the highest ideals of the United States. By legislating hate, the United States
- ended a move toward democracy in Japan and ushered in Japan’s resentment of the US
- prevented Jews from moving out of every-increasing danger zones (including the family of Anne Frank, according to A Fever in the Heartland)
- reduced innovation and suppressed the economy in the United States
- perpetuated eugenics and racial stereotyping
- encouraged and influenced the thinking of Adolf Hitler
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher in The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress, 1905