No Moore, Please: “The negro slave of the South was housed and fed, the white trash of California is placed beneath the Mongolian.”

Roy Moore lost the Senate election, but his broad popularity suggests that many people support his racist ideas. Moore turned heads this week when he justified slavery: “I think it was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery — they cared for one another.... Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”

This is not new. It is a rehash of bigoted reasoning that is ingrained in American thought. Consider this brief excerpt from “progressive” labor leaders who were making the case for an “Asiatic Exclusion Zone”— that is, a lid ranging from then-Persia (Iran), east through India, China, Japan and the Phillipines, limiting immigration to 100 people per nation each year. This was eventually achieved in 1929.

For many years it has been impossible to get white persons to do the menial labor performed by Chinese and Japanese— ‘It is Mongolian’s labor and not fit for whites.’ In the agricultural districts a species of help has been created, known as the blanket man. White laborers seldom find permanent employment; the Mongolian is preferred. During harvest time the white man is forced to wander from ranch to ranch and find employment here and there for short periods of time, with the privilege of sleeping in the barn or haystacks. He is looked upon as a vagabond, unfit to associate with his employer or to eat from the same table with him. The negro slave of the South was housed and fed, but the white trash of California is placed beneath the Mongolian.

Source: Samuel Gompers & Herman Gutstadt, Meat Vs. Rice: American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism: Which Shall Survive? (1902), at p. 14.