Hating on School Kids Has Consequences

On October 11, 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered all Japanese students to “Oriental schools” in the city. It was the Asian equivalent of “separate but equal schools” for blacks. The policy was pushed by labor unions that wanted to send Japanese workers back home. They organized a group that would seem popular today: The Exclusion League. Racial prejudice was at the heart of their grievance.

This local event blew up into an international crisis. The Japanese government was deeply insulted by the prejudice that accompanied the policy.

As reported by Raymond Leslie Buell in 1924, “School principals in San Francisco, the superintendent of the Los Angeles city schools, the state convention of school superintendents, President Jordan of Stanford and President Wheeler of the University of California— all, in one way or another, intimated their disapproval of this drastic action.” The Stanford University president went so far as to say that the exclusion measure would mean “war between the United States and Japan.”

In the short term, President Teddy Roosevelt jumped into the fray and tried to soothe a furious Japan. Nonetheless, the policy of racial segregation remained in place; the U.S. enacted a law to prevent more Japanese from coming to America; and Japanese Americans were treated with great disrespect (specifics in photo above).

The U.S. and Japan never came to a peaceful adjustment of their relationship after the San Francisco school fiasco. Mutual hatreds simmered for decades, leading up to the ruthless surprise attack by Japan on Americans at Pearl Harbor.

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The context is different today but America is again a boiling pot of division. Laura Ingraham, who thrives on controversy and division, took to Twitter to insult David Hogg, a high school student who survived the Parkland school shooting. Like the labor leaders of the Exclusion League in San Francisco, she probably had a feel-good moment by taking out her mean-spirited frustrations on a school kid. But just as Japan eventually punched back over repeated insults and provocations, David Hogg tweeted a plea for a boycott by sponsors of Ingaham’s program. So far, he has been successful.

School kids look like easy prey in political battles. Sometimes, there are painful consequences for attacking them.