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Minorities in America

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Submitted By JRivers
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Minorities in America have been subject to many hardships and discrimination throughout the history of our nation. So much so, the political status and system for minorities used to be referred to as a separate system of law compared to that of white Americans. The most obvious reference of “minority” I refer to is the experience of black Americans, but other examples of separate systems of law are the political hardships experienced by Native American Indians and Asian (specifically Chinese) immigrants in America. In this paper I will talk about three specific factors that have separated the gap between equality in the political and social system for minorities in the United States: the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the Black Civil Rights Movement (specifically Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), and the presidency of Andrew Jackson and the resulting fate of American Indians.
Instead of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the main factor of why the immigration of Orientals in the West became an issue could be the California Gold Rush in 1849. This led to mass migration to the Western U.S., and we began importing Chinese laborers to fulfill the need for cheap work. The number of Chinese in the U.S. rose from 25,000 in 1850 to over 300,000 by 1880 and 77% of that number went to California. This led to a debate about the status of the Chinese in America. In 1878 the Supreme Court ruled that Orientals, who were seen as “not white”, were also seen as unfit for self-government because Asia was not democratic, so they should be ineligible for citizenship (Fraga, Jan. 21).
Then on May 6, 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law ever passed in the U.S. that banned any group of people from coming to America solely because of race. This was not the only time, Americans also told the Chinese they were not allowed into the U.S. again in 1892,

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