{"id":17223,"date":"2010-05-13T07:47:36","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T13:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=17223"},"modified":"2010-05-13T23:27:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T05:27:31","slug":"az-law-follows-past-unjust-attempts-to-deny-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/az-law-follows-past-unjust-attempts-to-deny-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"AZ law follows past unjust attempts to deny rights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/45976898@N02\/<\/a> \/ CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/div>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

What do Rosa Parks, C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez, Japanese Americans, Nelson Mandela and American Jews have in common? \u00a0They were all law breakers. \u201cIllegals\u201d we would call them today. And like today\u2019s undocumented Mexicans (and the other third of the state population in Arizona who look like Mexicans), they were suspect and persecuted primarily because of their race.<\/p>\n

In 1955, Montgomery, Alabama police charged Rosa Parks<\/a> with violating the local segregation laws by sitting in a \u201cWhites Only\u201d part of the bus. In 1973 C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez<\/a>, (a native Arizonan) and 3,500 migrant farm workers were arrested for striking against unfair employment practices in California. Of course, the fact that they were mostly Mexican-Americans made it easier to argue they didn\u2019t deserve the same rights as other Americans at the time.<\/p>\n

In 1942 Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the mass incarceration<\/a> of 110,000 Japanese Americans. \u00a0Two-thirds were American citizens, and more than half were children and infants. \u00a0From 1948 to 1994 thousands of black and white South Africans, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested for violating the segregation \u201capartheid\u201d laws<\/a> of that country.<\/p>\n

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Eric Griego<\/p><\/div>\n

Jewish discrimination has roots during the Civil War, when General Ulysses S. Grant issued an order of expulsion<\/a> against Jews from the portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi under his control. \u00a0President Lincoln rescinded the order shortly thereafter. Despite Lincoln\u2019s action, Jews continued to be discriminated against in employment, social clubs and colleges throughout most of the 19th and part of the 20th centuries.<\/p>\n

In most of these cases, popular opinion supported these unjust laws and discriminatory treatment of certain groups. \u00a0Whites in the American South overwhelmingly supported laws such as the one used to arrest Rosa Parks. California farmers and many local citizens supported the unequal treatment of Mexican migrant farm workers. \u00a0The overwhelming majority of Americans supported the Japanese internment camps during World War II. \u00a0Most white South Africans and western governments did not oppose apartheid until two decades after its implementation. \u00a0And only recent generations of Jews have been fully accepted in the American social and political landscape.<\/p>\n

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Headed for the dustbin<\/h3>\n

There are other similarities between these historic events and countless other misguided attempts, such as Arizona\u2019s SB1070<\/a> to deny rights based on national mood, a poor economy, or unabashed racism:<\/p>\n

\u2022 First, all of these policies or laws have at their core discrimination against a group of people because of their race or nationality.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Second, all them justified arresting and punishing these groups based on \u201cillegal\u201d activity \u2013 i.e. they broke laws that perpetuated discrimination.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Third, as discussed above, these laws had broad support in their local and national citizenry, at least among those in the majority or in power.<\/p>\n

\u2022Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all of these laws were ultimately repealed, struck down or otherwise relegated to the dustbin of history.<\/p>\n

So it will be with Arizona\u2019s SB1070 and similar attempts around the country. Unjust laws that target people based on race or national origin have never survived in America or most of the civilized world.<\/p>\n

Whether they are blacks or Japanese or Jews or Mexicans, the courageous and just among our leaders and countrymen have stood up to these efforts \u2013 even if it was politically unpopular at the time. And history is on their side.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope more Americans speak out<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson once said, \u201cAll tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.\u201d Not enough Americans are speaking out against SB1070.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of Americans are themselves descendents of immigrants who came to this country for the same reasons most Mexican immigrants come here \u2013 to work, to raise their children with an education, and most of all to have some dignity. There were no papers or documents when the Irish, Italians, Germans, Dutch or countless other waves of immigrants arrived on our shores. \u00a0They were welcomed and, although many faced some of the same discrimination Mexicans face today, ultimately they became part of the American mosaic and we are better for it.<\/p>\n

Rosa Parks said, \u201cI would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.\u201d She wasn\u2019t just talking about black people.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope the ill-conceived Arizona immigration law, and the nationalistic and often racist sentiments it has raised in American public opinion, will go the way that segregation in the South, apartheid in South Africa, Japanese internment, and anti-Semitic laws and the \u201cleaders\u201d who defended them have all gone \u2013 straight into the scrap heap of dark chapters in history.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s also hope that more Americans and their leaders speak out against this kind of political scapegoating.<\/p>\n

Griego<\/em><\/a> is a\u00a0state senator\u00a0representing southern\u00a0Albuquerque, the East Mountains and Northern Valencia County. He is the former chairman of the\u00a0state economic development\u00a0commission and former president of the NM municipal league.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unjust laws that target people based on race or national origin have never survived in America or most of the civilized world. So it will be with Arizona\u2019s SB1070 and similar attempts around the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":545,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[140,143],"class_list":["post-17223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-race-and-ethnicity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/545"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}