Remembering state’s history of institutional racism

Last month was the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of an executive order that authorized the construction of Japanese-American internment camps and the rounding up and incarceration of American citizens of Japanese descent.

Santa Fe, of course, shares in that history. One of the many camps was on Santa Fe’s west side, opening in early 1942. By the end of World War II, some 2,000 Japanese-American men were held there. But that camp wasn’t New Mexico’s first instance of institutional racism against Asian-Americans. State Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, in a floor speech last week, reminded fellow senators of another splotch of racism on our state’s history. He was speaking during discussion of a memorial declaring it “Asian-American Day” at the Legislature.

Back in 1921 — 20 years before Pearl Harbor — the state added a nasty little section to the state constitution that reads, “Until otherwise provided by law no alien, ineligible to citizenship under the laws of the United States, or corporation, co-partnership or association, a majority of the stock or interest in which is owned or held by such aliens, shall acquire title, leasehold or other interest in or to real estate in New Mexico.”

“Ineligible aliens” basically was “dog whistle” code for Asian immigrants, who were excluded from citizenship by the federal laws of the time. And it remained in the state constitution until 2006.

McSorley said this provision was directed mainly against the Japanese and Chinese. “They were brought into this country to work on the railroads, but then once the railroads were finished, they were discarded,” he said.

Several states, mostly in the West, adopted such laws or constitutional provisions. “So of course they couldn’t participate in the economic benefits of all their hard labor,” McSorley told me.

California was the first state to pass such a measure in 1913. The California attorney general at the time wrote that such legal restrictions would limit Asian immigration “for they will not come in large numbers and long abide with us if they may not acquire land.”

In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “alien land” laws were unconstitutional.

At the time, New Mexico and Florida were the only two states in the country with the “alien land” provisions still on the books.

I know from covering the Legislature all these years that New Mexico doesn’t like to be an “early adopter” of these newfangled ideas.

But at least we did something about it 11 years ago. In 2008, Florida voters chose not to repeal it. Florida never did. According to the Florida Legislature’s website, there currently are two measures aimed at repealing the alien land provision.

McSorley said it wasn’t an easy battle. He successfully got a proposed constitutional amendment through the Legislature in early 2001. “The problem is the first time I got it passed, it appeared on the ballot in 2002, right after 9/11,” he said, referring to the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People in 2002 were uneasy about messing with the constitution to give “aliens” rights.

But by 2005, the next time he carried the amendment, “all the 9/11 stuff had died down,” he said.

But apparently not completely. While vote counts for legislation from the Senate in 2005 aren’t available online, the Legislature’s website shows that in the House, 20 representatives voted against it. Just the count is available, not the names of the lawmakers voting yes or no.

In the 2016 general election, more than 69 percent of those voting passed the amendment.

“The argument was, ‘Oh, what difference does it make?’ ” McSorley said. “The Supreme Court has said you can’t discriminate on race, creed or color. But to me, the constitution is aspirational. These are the things to which we aspire. And to have something like that in our constitution was a horrible, horrible expression of who we were.”

Some believe that racism and xenophobia are on the rise again in the Land of the Free. Let’s hope they’re wrong.