florida and the big, bad, racist law
by denise wongHere’s a scary thought: the electorate doesn’t take institutionalized racism seriously anymore.
The truth of this statement was likely a major contributing factor to the defeat of Florida’s Amendment 1 during the November 4 election, a ballot measure that would have repealed an alien land law barring “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning property.
The racist origins of this 83 year-old law are indubitable. The original alien land law passed in California in 1913 in an effort to protect nativist economic interests from Asian immigrant farmers. According to the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), a myriad of other states soon followed, believing that property restrictions on the West Coast would prompt Asian farmers to go eastward. Florida amended its constitution to include its own alien land law in 1926.
Presently, Florida is the only state in the country that has yet to repeal its alien land law. Efforts to finally get voters to rid the constitution of this legislation finally succeeded in 2007, after a disturbing three years of failed attempts to get the measure put on the Florida state ballot. The law, which directly violates equal protection laws and the Fourteenth Amendment, is obviously not enforced, so its repeal would be nothing more than a cost-free symbolic gesture. It needed 60% of the electorate’s approval to pass, yet ultimately failed by a measure of 52%-48%.
The 1790 Naturalization Act in the U.S. limited naturalized citizenship to “free, white persons,” which makes the phrase “aliens ineligible to citizenship” racially charged. This law’s pieces of legislation included the 1924 Immigration Act, which served to exclude most Asian populations, and the Supreme Court decision of Takao Ozawa v. US. The number of times the term “aliens ineligible to citizenship” has been used in US history to restrict the rights of Asian Americans makes it patently evident that this is a racist law.
The amendment’s outcome would most likely have been different if everybody knew this, and post-election, many people that lamented the ballot measure’s defeat pointed their fingers at state Senator Steven Geller’s and OCA Florida chapter’s failure to do enough outreach and clarify the law’s confusing language. In fact, Geller and OCA-South Florida president Winnie Tang have been repeatedly quoted that the measure was unlikely to succeed, as many voters would think the law targets illegal aliens instead of Asian Americans. Whatever the cause, proponents of the measure did enough to gain 48% of voters’ support. It should be noted that the history and original intent of the act were covered in every news article to have featured the amendment, both pre- and post-election.
Once the voting public is given a chance to speak, however, the culprit becomes clearer: Amendment 1 failed because the electorate disconcertingly refuses to take institutionalized racism seriously. Online articles that brought attention to the proposal are riddled with comments from users who deliberately misinterpret the amendment and refuse to even entertain the notion that the term “aliens ineligible to citizenship” is grounded in legislative racism: some claim that there is no explicit reference to race and the controversy surrounding Florida’s law is a result of over-analysis, some maintain that this is a detrimental measure to relax immigration restrictions, some believe that the highly confusing law has probably prevailed for so long for a good reason, and some make superficial and blatantly incorrect claims as, “Do you not understand the ‘ineligble (sic) for citizenship’ means either you entered this country illegally or that you have commited (sic) a crime once you got here. Either way you are an alien criminal and need to be sent back to your home country. There is absolutely nothing racist about that.”
Such comments are far too similar and pervasive to be considered part of some massive internet trolling project. Given the backlash against the P.C.-movement of the last decade and the triumph of having elected the first black president, it is tempting to believe that racism is over and those who cry racism are oversensitive.
Additionally, illegal immigration is a huge issue in Florida, and, as Pacific Citizen assistant editor Lynda Lin states, it is very easy to misinterpret the law due to its use of such controversial keywords as “property rights” and “aliens.”
In the midst of all this, however, it is utterly disgraceful and incredulous that the majority of a state’s electorate, denying the reality of legislative racism in history, actually voted a textbook example of institutional racism into state legislation.
In spite of this, community leaders and former proponents of the amendment have expressed optimism, saying that now the measure has received greater attention, they will work harder to put together a similar bill for the 2010 election.
In doing so, it is ostensibly important that they focus their efforts in trying to educate a populace that consciously refuses to learn.