My wife sent me this photo today from
Kentucky. It's a stunning reminder that America has turned its clock back about 150 years.
In 1875, under the pretext
that we “exist in a free, enlightened, and Christian country,” President Ulysses
S. Grant urged Congress to root out polygamy, a practice embraced by Mormons in
Utah. In the next paragraph, he had the same type of Christian logic-leap as
President Trump: “While this is being done [outlawing polygamy], I invite the attention of Congress to another,
though perhaps no less an evil— the importation of Chinese women, but few of
whom are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful occupations.”
Translation: Women from China are innate prostitutes —but in reality,
many women from China came to America to find a Chinese husband and raise a family.
Thus, in 1875 Congress enacted a law that devastated the
Chinese American community for nearly a century.
The Page Act required any “Asiatic
woman” to travel to the Consul Office in Hong Kong for an interview and visa
to enter the U.S. A few women—136—were able to prove to the Consul in 1882 that
they were married to a Chinese man who was in the U.S. All other women were
turned back.
The Page Act had severe consequences
for suppressing Chinese American families. George Anthony Peffer, in a 1986
study, concluded that “although the Exclusion Act transformed Chinese Americans
into a declining immigrant group, it was the Page Law that exacerbated the
problem of life without families in America’s Chinatowns.” Stanford Lyman, in
his book Chinese Americans (1974) concluded that the Page Act meant that for
nearly 100 years, American Chinatowns contained very few families—and it was
not until the 1970s that a gender balance began to emerge between Chinese
American men and women.
It’s hard to see how Christian values
could lead to a legal attack on a peaceful religious minority, and also cause family suppression on grounds of race. Today, these two groups achieve well above the norm for Americans in academic and professional success. It's no thanks, however, to the Christian values that were funneled through politics.
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