How On Earth Is This Legal?

The idea of any law made in the United States that explicitly singles out an ethnic group for lesser status should offend people. It's against the whole spirit of the country. The idea that anybody can pull themselves up. We think it's the American...something. Dream? We can never remember those.

Anyway, here's the craziest part: there's absolutely nothing illegal about the Chinese Exclusion Act. If you're thinking, "Well, this violates the First Amendment," you need to look again. Nowhere does the First Amendment give you Freedom of Ethnicity. In fact, since Founding Fathers like Washington, Jefferson, and guy-who-wrote-the-Bill-of-Rights Madison were all slave owners, they weren't too into Freedom of Ethnicity.

If you're thinking that this violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, well, you're on much more solid ground. Also, you're pretty sharp. For those who don't know, the 14th Amendment was one of three amendments (13-15) enacted post Civil War in an effort to give African Americans equal rights. The equal protection clause states that all citizens get equal protections under the law regardless of any other status.

The problem there is that it specifically says "citizens." The Chinese Exclusion Act targets immigrants who, by definition, are not citizens. It also bars Chinese people from becoming citizens, which is a heck of a loophole to get around that equal protection clause.