Gilded Age Discrimination Essay

After the During the Gilded Age, racism continued to spread against different ethnic groups within America. Different ethnic groups faced discrimination for a variety of factors such as their skin color, or the fact they had jobs. Some of the ethnic groups that faced a great amount of racism are African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants groups such as the Chinese. African Americans had faced racism the moment the importation of slaves started in America. Once the importation of slaves stopped, African Americans were still met with racism. After the north had won the Civil War, the treatment of African Americans was on the rise. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments were passed, churches and schools were built, and the Freedman’s

Chinese immigrants, manly single men, came to California with the hope of finding gold. When the amount of gold tapered off some Chinese immigrants obtained enough money to travel back to China, while some stayed in America. Those who stayed in America faced persecution from native Americans as well as European immigrants. The Chinese had to take any job their could get, such as a cook, in order to make money. Nativists resented the Chinese for this because they were taking the true American’s jobs. European immigrants, most noteable the Irish, also persecuted the Chinese for taking the jobs that required a small amount of skill. The Kearneyites, new immigrants from Europe, deeply resented the Chinese for taking jobs. The Chinese were regarded as threats rather than humans. This led to the murder of Chinese men by violent gangs of Kearneyites. Congress decided to put a halt on immigration from China by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Chinese immigrants were not allowed to come to America until 1943 when this was repealed. Some Americans did not think this was enough, and attempted to take away citizenship of Chinese Americans. The Supreme Court ruled against this stating that under the Fourteenth Amendment anyone born in America is granted citizenship. This helped protect the Chinese as well as other immigrant groups from the angry white