Un-American Character of Race Legislation

The above title is designed to express condemnation of legislation discriminating against particular races, and hence the objections to special legislation, commonly called by the ambiguous phrase &dquo;class legislation,&dquo; as far as based on race distinctions, will be here considered.Proper classification, and not race discrimination, ought to underlie legislation.As applied to immigration laws, this objec- tion seems to have been first authoritatively formulated by President Roosevelt and his able Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Oscar S.Straus, in official messages presently to be considered, but in principle such legislation is really inconsistent with the fundamental basis on which our government rests.The war against negro slavery in the United States was con- ducted upon this same principle.At the Republican National Con- vention of z8fio, before Lincoln was nominated, Joshua R. Giddings moved that the proposed party platform be amended by incorporating therein the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, in order to indicate clearly that the anti-slavery campaign was merely in harmony with that great declaration of human rights and human equality, and after this resolution had failed on account of ultra- conservatism, George William Curtis renewed the motion in slightly modified form, &dquo;daring,&dquo; in the language of his biographer,' &dquo;the representatives of the party of freedom meeting on the borders of the free prairies in a hall

Character (mathematics · Legislation · Political science · Race (biology · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · Law · Mathematics

• Making the Discriminating Mind

  Open Access•Ryan Ziols, Kathryn L Kirchgasler et al.•Teachers College Record The Voice…•2025

  Add to list