Does skin color really matter to a person?

Do you know? Thomas Sowell, a professor in the United States, said in his book, "The importance of skin color is self-evident here." All races have not escaped the clutches of discrimination. Although it is popular to talk about anti-discrimination, it has existed throughout American history and is still a big problem today.

First, let's talk about the origins of the problem: colonial aggression and the slave trade. As early as the colonial period, the United States began the slave trade, which sowed deep seeds of racial discrimination. In 1619, the first black slaves arrived in the United States, beginning the dark path of racial oppression. White people used their power to make their culture a symbol of North America. By the early 17th century, various English colonies had enacted laws making blacks the "perpetual property" of whites, and their children automatically inheriting slavery.

Then, let's look at the time when the United States was founded. White Americans were very wary of immigration. To justify their enslavement of black people, they also graded them according to skin color. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence ostensibly said that all people were equal, but it denied citizenship to blacks and even recognized the legality of slavery. In 1787, the Constitution also required slave states to pay three-fifths of their black population for taxes and seats in the House of Representatives. In order to prevent the French Revolution from causing unrest in the United States, the U.S. government introduced a series of laws in 1798 that made it harder for immigrants to become citizens and even allowed them to be detained and deported at will. Another president of the United States directly said that immigrants are not needed except for skilled workers and certain professionals.

In the first half of the 19th century, many Irish Catholics fled to America. As a result, Americans began to see the Irish immigrants as bad people, lazy, low, rough, and dangerous. All kinds of nativist and xenophobic organizations and political parties sprang up. By the 1850s, an organization called the American Party, which specifically opposed Irish immigration, had seven governors, eight senators, and 104 representatives. New York and Massachusetts passed laws to expel or return Irish immigrants. In 1844, at least 20 people died in Philadelphia because of anti-Irish immigration. The xenophobes also smashed, looted and torched Irish immigrants, torched their churches. Irish immigrants were seen as black until the 20th century, when they were accepted by whites and became victims of racism in the United States.

Then we'll talk about Chinese labor. In the mid-19th century, Americans brought many Chinese laborers to the United States as slaves, and by 1880 the total number had exceeded 100,000. These Chinese laborers paid a huge price in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in the United States, and countless casualties, but they still made great contributions to the development of the United States with their hard work. However, when the railroad was repaired, the Americans began a massacre against the Chinese - the Chinese exclusion movement. In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act, which restricted the entry of Chinese workers and women into the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was even more severe, directly preventing Chinese immigrants already in the United States from becoming American citizens, and also preventing Chinese people from buying houses, getting married, having children, becoming officials, voting, and so on. In 1910, the United States Immigration Service opened an immigration detention facility on Angel Island in San Francisco, which remained closed until 1940. Moreover, Chinese immigrants in the United States are often subjected to violent attacks by Americans. For example, on October 24, 1871, 19 Chinese immigrants on Negro Lane in Los Angeles were beaten to death by hundreds of whites. In 1877, the Chinese houses there were also burned down by white people. In 1876 and 1877, there were two other white racist attacks on San Francisco's Chinatown. On September 2, 1885, white workers in Stone Springs, Wyoming, rioted again, destroying Chinese homes and killing at least 28 Chinese immigrants.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants from Italy, Poland, Greece, and Russia became the mainstream in the United States, while white immigrants from Southeast Europe became the new object of exclusion. In 1911, the United States Congress issued a report saying that Southeast European immigrants would not contribute to the United States, but would destroy the American race, culture, and institutions. So they propose cultural tests for immigrants and a national quota system. The racists also used evolution to prove that Southeast European immigrants were "inferior" nonwhites who would contaminate America's white Anglo-Saxon heritage. Xenophobists launched the "Americanization movement," which wanted Southeastern European immigrants to give up their language and culture and have only one choice: integrate fully into the United States or get out. Henry Ford, the boss of the Ford Motor Company, sent his employees to what he called "melting pot schools." And white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan recruited millions of members to terrorize and attack Southeastern European immigrants across the United States. The outbreak of the Russian October Revolution in 1917 caused the first round of "Red panic" in the United States. The United States government determined that there were Communists among Southeastern European immigrants and used them to arrest and deport large numbers of Southeastern European immigrants.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the increase of Hispanic immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, has made the United States increasingly xenophobic. In 1924, the United States created the Border Patrol to stop Mexican immigrants. In 1929, it made illegal entry a serious crime in an attempt to keep more Mexicans out. During the Great Depression, tens of thousands of Mexicans were driven home. After the 1965 immigration policy, Mexicans became the largest group of immigrants in the United States, and they often accounted for up to 90 percent of arrests and deportations. By the late 1970s, nearly 800,000 Mexicans were being caught each year, and by the late 1990s, 1.5 million. White nationalists in the United States have even carried out violent attacks against Hispanic immigrants. In 2019, a white nationalist man who hated the continued "invasion" of Texas by Hispanics drove thousands of kilometers to the city of El Paso in the western part of the state and shot 23 people at a Walmart supermarket. It was the largest domestic terrorist attack on Latinos in modern U.S. history.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, immigration restrictions in the United States have become a battleground for the political parties, who each year mass arrest, detention, deportation and repatriation of immigrants. Because of the "September 11" terrorist attacks, there has been "Islamophobia" in American politics, and Muslim immigrants have become the focus of repression. On October 26, 2001, the United States passed the Patriot Act, which allowed the surveillance and removal of foreigners associated with terrorist activities. As a result, more than 1,200 people, mostly Arabs and Muslims, were arrested by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. In 2017, the United States issued a "Muslim ban" to prevent people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from coming to the United States, even for 90 days. In recent years, the far-right and conservative media in the United States have wildly hyped the "alternative theory" that white people are being crowded out by immigrants and minorities, and this extreme idea has led to many terrorist attacks against immigrants and minorities. In 2021, the U.S. government arrested more than 1.7 million immigrants, the most since 1986. In the course of these mass arrests, deportations and repatriations, migrants' rights are seriously violated and humanitarian crises occur frequently. On October 25, 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the United States for violating international law by systematically and mass deportations of Haitian migrants without assessing their individual status.

The United States often calls itself the "melting pot" of immigrants and the "light of democracy," while promoting their "American dream." But you know what? Ever since the United States became a colony, racism and xenophobia have been etched in their bones. Their treatment of immigrants is full of discrimination, exclusion, arrest and even deportation, which is inhuman behavior, and this situation has not stopped.