In his discussion of Asian Americans on last night's episode of "Last Week Tonight", John Oliver quoted Senator John Franklin Miller, a Republican from California, from the debates in the in 1882 about the Chinese Exclusion Act: “We ask of you to secure to us American Anglo-Saxon civilization without contamination or adulteration with any other." I found the quotation in a recent article in "The New Yorker" that also cites Senator George Frisbie Hoar, a Republican from Massachusetts, who criticized "the old race prejudice which has so often played its hateful and bloody part in history." Even then, the "Anglo-Saxon" ideas behind the exclusion of the Chinese were identified as "hateful". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 June 2021)
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| Senator George Frisbie Hoar |
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