Mary Antin Quotes
There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.
Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912, p. 111.
Illegal school racial segregation is no more, but the schools are still racially segregated. The concept of neighborhood schools makes the school population dependent on the residential population in any given area. And housing segregation is the rule in most of America—come caused illegally, but much the result of economic clustering of housing, customs, and ethnic communities. Therefore schools are still racially segregated except in those areas where housing is racially integrated.
Formally and informally orthodox Islam is one of the most sexist of the religions. In addition to the fundamentalist Christian and Orthodox discriminatory view of females, Sharia—Islamic Law—makes a woman’s testimony in court with half that of a man, prohibits women from clerical leadership, will not allow females to pray in Mosques in the main section but segregates them, and many others. Islamic customs require women to be covered head to toe in a cloak, forbids them from driving in some countries, does not allow them to be in the presence of men outside the family, mutilates young girls in brutal circumcision rituals, and many others. Not all Muslims are sexist and many call for reforms like Nomani. Turkey, the most modern and successful Islamic nation, outlawed all these discriminatory aspects of Sharia, and gave women the vote BEFORE America did.
It is not desirable to See Samson Benderly for an earlier, similar view.
Quoted in the Court’s notes of the meeting
Two hundred years earlier, in Spain, the Christians had similar laws discriminating against Jews whose synagogues had to be smaller and shorter than any Christian church.
Lopez had come from Portugal and had been living in Rhode Island for 9 years and was active in shipping, whaling and candle making. He, and another Jew, Issac Elizer, petitioned the Rhode Island Superior Court for naturalization and citizenship rights. The court turned them down and they appealed to the Rhode Island Assembly—then not only the legislature but the highest court in the colony. The assembly came up with a compromise. The Jews were allowed to continue to live and work in Rhode Island but they could not hold public office or vote. They told the Superior Court to reconsider the case however as Lopez and Elizer were model citizens—but for religion just the kind the colony wanted. This case and many others were known to the founding fathers who were determined to put a stop to the practice of conditioning voting and office holding rights on adhering to the particular sect of the majority of the colony. Lopez and Elizer then appealed again to the Superior Court.
This was before the Iranian Revolution and the Government of the Shah was attempting to modernize and allow any Iranian citizen who was otherwise qualified to be judges including women and people of other religions.
This quotation provides us with several important insights in American history. First, the Director of the FBI was an inveterate racist. Second, he felt no inhibition on sharing this discriminatory view with the Media. Third, he is yet another source for the fact that Blacks did not have a decent opportunity to get an education. There were some Southerners who maintained that they did have such an opportunity in the “Separate but Equal” segregated schools systems of the South. Hoover was not the only racist in the upper ranks of the FBI; most of the leadership was prejudiced. See {620621} and {74219} .
Mary Antin was an American author and immigration rights activist. She is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, an account of her emigration and subsequent Americanization.
