Old Fears New Foes (5/5): Racism & Restricting Immigration
Race, Italians, and Immigration Restriction.
Along this series, we have examined some of the pre-existing anxieties that led to the Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, the most restrictive enactment in American history. While the eugenic efforts provided a scientific and authoritative justification to the 1924 bill passing, we argue that the reasons that led to the approval of the act were of a different nature.
The Perils of Mixing Races
The fourth underlying anxiety that eugenicists legitimized was a concern about the mixing of the races. Our historical actors understood race differently (Vellon, 2018; Nagi, 1999).*
Concerns about the mixing of the races worried thinkers. Robert Grant, who staunchly advocated for immigration restriction, argued that Rome fell when it indiscriminately opened its doors (Spiro, 2009). Grant held that mixing races would reduce the quality of the population as a whole (Paul, 1995; Allen, 2013).
For him, the melting pot was “an absolute failure” (Rosen, 2004). President Calvin Coolidge (R-Massachusetts) had argued that (1912) “divergent people will not mix or blend.” Hypocritaly, Coolidge himself admitted to being of mixed race. Coolidge once told Native American humorist Will Rogers that he had Native American ancestors.
Neither of these views inherently implies a hierarchy of the races; instead they suggest that certain traits are better adapted to certain kinds of environment. Laughlin was asked about the mixing of the races during his testimony before Congress, and he said if “the racial type is not assimilable, and the inborn traits of character are less ideal than those of the foundation stocks, then immigration works toward ultimate disaster” (Laughlin, 1924). The idea that Europe was composed of different races persisted, and Laughlin would argue in 1929 that the census should make these distinctions.
Many thinkers at the time thought that a nation’s success was a product of the biological quality of its citizens (Bagehot, 1916).
Are Italians White?
Italians were perceived to be somewhere in between Black people and white people because they took similar jobs and shared some physical characteristics with both (Vellon, 2010; Ngai, 2014). This in-between status of Italians is evident from how laws were applied.
In March of 1891, a group of Italians was lynched in New Orleans (Trent, 1994). In this instance, a group of Italians, and suspected Mafia members, was arrested for the murder of a police officer was found not guilty (Vellon, 2018).
Nine men were charged but nineteen had initially been arrested. A mob shot, hanged, and beat eleven of them (Vellon, 2018). A few weeks before, Black people were hanged from the very same tree (Vellon, 2010).
The press mostly favored the murderous mob, and articles claimed that Italians were “properly punished” (LaGumina, 1973). The New York Times described the victims as “desperate ruffians and murders” (Vellon, 2018). Italians were lynched at least five other times during the 1890s (Vellon, 2018). The laws and norms that protected white people did not apply to Italians, which suggests that they were perceived to be qualitatively different (Vellon, 2010).
Race played a more prominent role in the discourse surrounding the 1924 immigration bill. Even ardent opponents of restricting immigration, like Franz Boas, willingly debated race (Spiro, 2009). Albert Johnson, who authored the 1924 bill, has been described as a “nordic suprematist” by historians (Paul, 1995). However, what is at stake regarding what race Italians belong to is whether they can become citizens and hence muster political power.
Since the early 20th-century the press had implied that Italians were criminals and vectors of dangerous ideas. Therefore, questions about the race of Italians also had to do with the possible political impact they could have if citizenship were granted to them.
The Naturalization Act of 1906 allowed white people and “persons of african descent” to become American citizens. In 1914 Takao Ozawa, of Japanese origin, applied for citizenship arguing that Japanese people were white.
The 1922 court case Ozawa vs United States (1922) had determined that only Caucasians, as popularly understood, were white. Thus, Italians and other Southern Europeans could become naturalized citizens, if they were considered white.
The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 & Outcomes
The 1924 Immigration Act had a large effect on who immigrated into the United States. The 1921 bill had already decreased Italian immigrants from 222,260 to 40,319 (Spiro, 2009). By 1925 only 2,262 entered (Okrent, 2019). Laughlin argued that quality was pivotal, even if quotas were not met.
In 1930 the United States had a quota of 25,957 Germans, but only one thousand had come (Bruinius, 2006). Laughlin insisted that the highest standard should not be lowered. Despite not fulfilling the German quota US immigration officials and diplomats would reject German Jews after at the Austrian Anschluss of 1938.
Some of our historical actors were motivated by their fear of the biology of new immigrants. Connely has argued that Laughlin likely convinced US Representative Albert Johnson (R-Washington) to see immigration as “more and more like a biological problem” (Connely, 2008). Allerfeldt has shown Johnson had to unify a wide array of disparate groups who wanted to restrict immigration and thus made compromises between them (2010).
I suspect that Johnson adopted the language of eugenics because it created common ground among all these groups. The Immigration Act of 1924 came into being and passed because there was widespread “fear, mistrust, and downright scorn of the southern Italian immigrant” (Vellon, 2018, p.212).
The concerns about new immigrants were similar to those that had been directed at other different immigrant groups like the Chinese. These stemmed from a view that
“No civilization can exist without a background — an active community of interest, a common aspiration — spiritual, social, and economic” (Coolidge, 1912).
Conclusions
Existing doubts about America’s ability to assimilate new immigrants, the view that these were inferior, the perception that they were responsible for criminal activity, and questions about race were the key reasons why immigration was restricted.
Scientists and the data they collected legitimised these preexisting anxieties. Some of these anxieties persist and are being directed towards newer immigrants.
We hope that by exploring how existing anxieties can find legitimacy in different discourses we can encourage ourselves and others to be cautious when embracing evidence or theories that confirm our assumptions.
Authors: Christian Orlic & Lucas Heili
This article series is based on a paper written by Christian Orlic for one of his graduate degrees.
You can read Part I here: Old Fears New Foes
You can read Part II here: Immigrants Do Not Assimilate
You can read Part III: Immigrants as an Economic Threat
You can read Part IV: The Onslaught of Criminals
You can read a brief history of Immigrations before 1924: Restricting Undesirable Immigrants
Sources
Sources (see the Fears-Foes Sources article).
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Lillian. Lillian orgsanised a few meetings via Zoom for the students in this class to discuss ideas, arguments, and approaches to our research. Lillian also offered some proofreading of the original essay. We also wanted to thank Eric who provided comments of a general nature. Lastly Scott provided copy editing of the original paper.
*There was a rich tradition of classification by which naturalists sought to study people. In the 1920s, there was a consensus holding some “races and classes to be inherently more dysgenic” (Cogdell, 2004). William Ripley, a railroad entrepreneur and amateur anthropologist, studied Europeans’ anatomy and skulls, determining that there were three races in Europe (Spiro, 2009). For others, Europeans were often divided into Teutons, Celts, and Mediterraneans, the last of whom were considered “inferior in mental character and physical ability” (Coffey, 2006). Francis Galton, who initiated eugenics, had argued that classical Greece had deteriorated due to being polluted by foreign migrants.
