Race and ethnicity  (Page 16/22)

Sally Hemings was a slave who was originally owned by a Virginia planter named John Wayles. Wayles owned Sally Hemings’s mother, raped her, and the result of that rape was Sally Hemings. John Wayles’s legitimate, white daughter Martha married Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and later, the third President of the United States. Upon her marriage to Jefferson, Martha was given Sally Hemings as her personal-maid/slave; Hemings was between 12 and 14 at the time. The marriage between Martha Wayles Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson was relatively short and ended with her death after which, Jefferson began a life-long relationship with Sally Hemings, siring several children, all of whom remained slaves for the duration of Jefferson’s life. DNA evidence, oral tradition in the Hemings family, and written documents maintained by the Hemings family solidly confirm that Jefferson was the father of all but the first of Sally Hemings’s children. The white descendants of Thomas Jefferson refuse to accept the evidence and argue that it was Jefferson’s brother who was responsible for siring Hemings’s children. The relationship between Jefferson and Hemings was undoubtedly complicated, but one thing is clear: Hemings could not prevent Jefferson from coming into her bed and having sex with her because she was his property! Slaves had no personal rights and slave women were often the repeated victims of their owner’s rapine behavior. Jefferson never acknowledged his children and they (and Sally Hemings, herself) remained slaves until after Jefferson’s death.

Anti-immigrant groups

The Statue of Liberty notwithstanding, (“give me your tired, your poor”), the United States has a long history of preventing immigration and attempting to block persons based on national origin and/or religion. There have been many anti-immigration groups and political parties in the United States beginning in the early 19 ^th century and continuing until the present day. Many of our immigration laws have been discriminatory and have stultified migration rather than encouraging it. The Native American Party, the American Party, the American Protective Association, the Immigration Restriction League, and the Ku Klux Klan, among many other groups, were all founded based on their opposition to the immigration of anyone they considered unworthy—Italians, Jews, Greeks, Poles, Irish Catholics, Catholics or non-Protestants in general, and all non-whites which included, among people traditionally classified as non-white, Italians, Greeks, Turks, and other residents of the southern European, Mediterranean coast, and eastern European, mostly Catholic or Muslim, peoples. Congress vacillates between restricting and encouraging migration from various regions of the planet. Nevertheless, we were a nation of immigrants at our inception and remain a nation of immigrants to this day.

In 2010 there are still anti-immigration groups. PublicEye.org publishes a list of about a dozen anti-immigrant groups that ranges from think tanks to the Christian right as does the Southern Poverty Law Center . In February 2010, former US House of Representatives member Tom Tancredo (R-CO), gave the keynote address to the first Tea Party convention arguing that we need “a civics literacy test” before anyone in this country can vote. He also stated that if John McCain had been elected president in 2009,

President Calderon and President McCain would be toasting the elimination of those pesky things called borders and major steps taken toward creation of a North American Union.