An Editorial by Warren J. Blumenfeld

Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and Belgium on May 10, 1940. Within weeks, Nazis forced Jews — including many of my relatives  — into restricted areas, and commanded them to affix a yellow Star of David to their upper garments. Yellow to the Nazis symbolized racial impurity, and Jews they considered to have derived from inferior racial stock.

What the Nazis perpetrated onto Jews throughout Europe was a form of what has come to be labeled as “racial profiling.” The Nazis killed my Polish relatives in a mass grave in Krosno, and eventually shipped most of my Belgium family to Auschwitz concentration camp where they murdered them. 

We need to keep in mind that the notion of race is socially constructed. The concept of race arose concurrently with the advent of European exploration as a justification and rationale for conquest and domination of the globe beginning around the 15th century. Race, therefore, is an historical, “scientific” and biological myth. It is an idea. Geneticists tell us that there is often more variability within a given so-called race than between races, and that there are no essential genetic markers linked specifically to race.

Though race is a social construction, its implications are far reaching and impact individuals and groups in profound ways. 

“Racial profiling occurs when race is used by law enforcement or private security officials, to any degree, as a basis for criminal suspicion in non-suspect specific investigations,” said the human rights organization Amnesty International said. Racial profiling constitutes a form of discrimination, based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality and other identities, which, Amnesty International declares “undermines the basic human rights and freedoms to which every person is entitled.”

While social realities between Nazi Germany to the contemporary United States America are not identical, some clear parallels exist. This was brought to light last week as I was watching a CNN report of a demonstration by opponents of a new Arizona bill signed into law by Gov. Janice Brewer. One of the demonstrators, a Jewish man, wore an armband with a Star of David. 

The Arizona law mandates that police officers stop and question people about their immigration status if they even suspect that they may be in this country illegally, and criminalizes undocumented workers who do not possess an “alien registration document.” Other provisions allow citizens to file suits against government agencies that do not enforce the law, and criminalizes employers who knowingly transport or hire undocumented workers.   

Last week while speaking at a naturalization ceremony in the White House Rose Garden for 24 members of the armed forces, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform while making it clear that the Arizona law is “misguided” and that “the recent efforts in Arizona, [have] threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

“By signing it, this bill, Gov. Brewer has thrown the door wide open for racial profiling,” said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the civil rights organization National Council of La Raza.

The Arizona action follows a series of discriminatory race– and nationality-based immigration laws passed throughout our nation’s history. For example, back in 1790, the newly constituted U.S. Congress passed the Naturalization Act, which excluded all non-whites from citizenship, including Asians, enslaved Africans and Native Americans, the later whom they defined in oxymoronic terms as “domestic foreigners,” even though they had inhabited this land for an estimated 35,000 years. The Congress did not grant Native Americans rights of citizenship until 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, though Asians continued to be denied naturalized citizenship status. 

Congress passed the first law specifically to restrict or exclude immigrants on the basis of race and nationality in 1882. In its attempts to eliminate entry of Chinese (and other Asian) workers who often competed for jobs with U.S. citizens, especially in the western United States, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to restrict entry into the U.S. for a 10-year period, while denying citizenship to Chinese people already on these shores. The act also made it illegal for Chinese people to marry white or black U.S.–Americans. The Immigration Act of 1917 further prohibited immigration from Asian countries, in the terms of the law, the “barred zone,” including parts of China, India, Siam, Burma, Asiatic Russian, the Polynesian Islands and parts of Afghanistan.

Fearing a continued influx of immigrants, legislators in the U.S. Congress in 1924 enacted an anti-immigration law (Origins Quota Act, or National Origins Act) setting restrictive quotas of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe (groups viewed as representing Europe’s lower races), including Jews (the later referred to as members of the so-called Hebrew race). The law, however, permitted large allocations of immigrants from Great Britain and Germany. In addition, the law included a clause prohibiting entry of “aliens ineligible to citizenship,” which was veiled language referring to Japanese and other Asians dating back to the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricting citizenship to only “white” people and affirmed by a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Takao Ozawa vs. United States) in which Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant, was denied the right to become a naturalized citizen because he “clearly” was “not Caucasian.” 

Returning to today, if we learn anything from our immigration legislative history, we can view the current debates as providing a great opportunity to pass comprehensive federal reform based not on race, nationality, ethnicity, religion or other social identity categories, but rather, on humane principles of fairness, compassion and equity.

Warren Blumenfeld is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction.