Taken from: http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=334

October 21, 2012

Sometimes the best life lessons can be learned from kids.  Kids like Miss Vivienne Harr of Fairfax, Calif. Vivie, as she likes to be called, is a personality-full-cup-runneth-over, 8-year-old philanthropy phenom who set up a lemonade stand – or what I like to call Lemonade Stand 2.0.

Vivie was inspired to take a stand against slavery after seeing an installation on slavery by Lisa Kristine, a photographer who captured these authentic, haunting, gut-wrenching snapshots of modern-day slaves around the world. The family cried in disbelief. They went home and researched slavery and human trafficking.

Vivie was inspired to take action. She quickly garnered tens of thousands of supporters from the local and worldwide community and raised more than $50,000 dollars in just under two months.

Vivie’s project went viral after Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times op-ed columnist, tweeted about @vivienneharr and #MAKEASTAND LEMONADE. She’s also been featured on many media outlets including the BBC, Yahoo and is slated to appear on Jeff Probst’s talk show, which debuts on Sept. 10.All the business acumen that Vivie had was selling lemonade. She took a stand and did something – selling lemonade was in her power to be a voice for the voiceless.  Rain or shine, Vivie plans to set up shop and sell her organic, free trade, made-with-love lemonade every day until they raise $150,000 to free 500 slaves. All of the proceeds will go to NOT FOR SALE, a nonprofit organization that re-abolishes slavery around the world. Won’t you join her and make a stand?

Vivie isn’t stopping at her $150,000 goal. She’s working with investors to bottle her #MAKEASTAND LEMONADE … stay tuned!

“Race and College Admissions, Facing a New Test by Justices”

Sounds like this case will soon join the ranks of other landmark and highly controversial cases like Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School (1996), & Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)… Hopefully someday everyone will acknowledge how systemic the legacy of white supremacy and privilege is in this country. 

Taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on-affirmative-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&

October 8, 2012

Abigail Fisher is a slight young woman with strawberry blond hair, a smile that needs little prompting, a determined manner and a good academic record. She played soccer in high school, and she is an accomplished cellist.

But the university she had her heart set on, the one her father and sister had attended, rejected her. “I was devastated,” she said, in her first news interview since she was turned down by the University of Texas at Austin four years ago.

Ms. Fisher, 22, who is white and recently graduated from Louisiana State University, says that her race was held against her, and the Supreme Court is to hear her case on Wednesday, bringing new attention to the combustible issue of the constitutionality of racial preferences in admissions decisions by public universities. “I’m hoping,” she said, “that they’ll completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions and that everyone will be able to get into any school that they want no matter what race they are but solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it.”

The university said Ms. Fisher would not have been admitted even if race had played no role in the process, and it questioned whether she has suffered the sort of injury that gives her standing to sue. But the university’s larger defense is that it must be free to assemble a varied student body as part of its academic and societal mission. The Supreme Court endorsed that view by a 5-to-4 vote in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.

University officials said that the school’s affirmative action program was needed to build a student body diverse enough to include minority students with a broad range of backgrounds and for the campus to have a “critical mass” of minority students in most classrooms. Interaction among students in class and around campus, said Kedra Ishop, the university’s director of admissions, helps students overcome biases and make contributions to a diverse society. “The role of U.T. Austin,” Dr. Ishop said, “is to provide leadership to the state.”

The majority opinion in the Grutter case, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, rejected the use of racial quotas in admissions decisions but said that race could be used as one factor among many, as part of a “holistic review.” Justice O’Connor retired in 2006, and her replacement by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. may open the way for a ruling cutting back on such race-conscious admissions policies, or eliminating them.

Admissions officers at colleges and universities almost universally endorse the idea that students from diverse backgrounds learn from each other, overcome stereotypes, and in so doing prepare themselves for leadership positions in society. Many critics of affirmative action say that there is at best a weak correlation between race and having a range of views presented in the classroom.

Others say the Constitution does not permit the government to sort people by race, no matter how worthy its goal. “While racial diversity on college campuses is beneficial, it cannot be attained by racial discrimination,” said Edward Blum, an adviser to Ms. Fisher and a driving force behind the Fisher case.

The competing arguments are hard to test, but a recent visit to a freshman seminar at the University of Texas at Austin suggested that the intellectual life of undergraduates there is varied and vibrant.

The course was called Debates on Democracy in America, and the topic that day was “The Known World,” Edward P. Jones’s novel about a black slave owner. It was only the third week of class, but the 18 students, of all sorts of ethnicities and backgrounds, talked easily and earnestly about contemporary echoes of slavery. An Asian student mentioned cheap labor in China. A Hispanic one talked about the ways employers in the United States take advantage of illegal immigrants.

Other comments ran counter to possible stereotypes. D’wahn Kelley, a black student, said he hesitated to condemn the slave owner in the novel too harshly. “You’re judged on what you know, not what you don’t know,” he said, referring to the limits of the character’s moral imagination. “If you wanted to be successful, you had a right to own slaves.”

In response, Ashley Vasquez, a Hispanic student, said the she rejected “the whole idea that you have to learn right and wrong.” “It’s hard for me to think,” she said, “that you can go about your day thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to own a human being.’ ”

Three-quarters of applicants from Texas are admitted under a program that guarantees admission to the top students in every high school in the state. (Almost everyone calls this the Top Ten program, though the percentage cutoff can vary. Ms. Fisher barely missed the cutoff.) The remaining Texas students and those from elsewhere are considered under standards that take account of academic achievement and other factors, including race and ethnicity. The Top Ten program has produced substantial racial and ethnic diversity. In the fall of last year, freshmen who enrolled under the program were 26 percent Hispanic and 6 percent black. Texas is 38 percent Hispanic and 12 percent black.

The practical question in Austin is what eliminating the additional race-conscious admissions program would mean for seminars like the one on democracy, for lecture classes and for interactions in cafeterias and dormitories.

The university said the Top Ten program was a blunt instrument and that classes in many subjects have few or no minority students. It adds that the diversity generated by the Top Ten program is “mostly a product of the fact that Texas high schools remain highly segregated in regions of the state,” which “limits the diversity that can be achieved within racial groups.”

Among the kind of student excluded by the Top Ten program, the university said is “the African-American or Hispanic child of successful professionals in Dallas who has strong SAT scores and has demonstrated leadership ability in extracurricular activities but falls in the second decile of his or her high school class (or attends an elite private school that does not rank).”

Ms. Fisher’s lawyers called that “a newly minted interest in elitism dressed up as ‘intra-racial’ diversity.” They added that the university is making the unseemly pitch for “its preferred kind of minorities” at the expense of white students like Ms. Fisher with similar qualifications.

Talking in the hallway after the seminar, Joao Eloy, who was admitted outside the Top Ten program, said he had mixed feelings about the university’s approach. “My only concern is if diversity becomes a priority above merit,” he said, adding that he was wary of any system that “punishes Asians and poor whites, to name a few.” But Mr. Eloy, who said his heritage was Brazilian (making him Latino but not Hispanic, he said), said classrooms were enriched by a mix of voices. “The different perspectives help a lot,” he said. “It makes it really interesting.”

Nosa Aimuyo, whose parents are Nigerian immigrants and who was also admitted outside the Top Ten program, said race-conscious admissions were needed to address “disparities in opportunity between high schools, which disproportionately affect minorities.”

In an interview in his office in Austin, William C. Powers Jr, the university’s president, said the attributes that the university seeks have many dimensions. “We want diversity in terms of economic background, first generation, geography, inner city, suburban middle class,” he said. Asked what he would say to Ms. Fisher, whose own background is middle class, about her disappointment at being rejected, Mr. Powers paused for a moment. “We look at everyone’s holistic characteristics,” he said.

Last month, Ms. Fisher spent a morning chatting with a reporter at a private club in Washington and then took an impromptu tour of the Supreme Court, where the grandeur of the surroundings seemed to bring home to her the gravity of the question she had presented to the justices. She is working in Austin, where she had wanted to be in the first place, as a financial analyst. She said her college years at Louisiana State had been fine and that she had enjoyed the camaraderie of the bowling team. But she added that she had lost a benefit that her state’s government had decided to distribute on a basis other than merit. “The only thing I missed out on was my post-graduation years,” she said. “Just being in a network of U.T. graduates would have been a really nice thing to be in. And I probably would have gotten a better job offer had I gone to U.T.” She said she was trying to come to terms with her role in a case that could reshape American higher education. Asked if she found it interesting or exciting or scary, she said, “All of the above.” But she did not hesitate to say how she would run an admission system. “I don’t think,” she said, “that we even need to have a race box on the application.”

“Italian Vogue endorses ‘slave earrings,’ offers possibly most embarrassing vogue gaffe ever”

Taken from: http://thegloss.com/fashion/italian-vogue-endorses-slave-earrings-offers-possibly-most-embarrassing-vogue-gaffe-ever/

August 23, 2011

A few weeks ago, Vogue Italia’s website produced a paragraph of fashion copy so stunningly insensitive it must be seen to be believed. Thank you, Jezebel, for noticing. First, let’s have a look at the headline:

So, that’s astounding. Boasting the title of first major fashion glossy to publish an all-black model issue (problematic though that may be) and editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani’s initiatives against pro-ana websites, Italian Vogue is commonly thought to be the most progressive of the Vogue family. So you figure, oh god, maybe it’s just a problem with translation, right? Right…?

THE LATEST INTERPRETATION IS PURE FREEDOM.

Italian Vogue has since changed the headline of the post to “Ethnic Earrings” and managed to excise the word “slave” from the body copy (that’s the update above, but Jezebel has its original version). I suppose they forgot to update the tags.

Pricelessly, the copy still concludes: “And the evolution goes on.” Maybe next time we can evolve away from anything resembling this kind of horseshit?

“Dolce & Gabbana offers racist earrings for spring 2013

Taken from: http://thegloss.com/fashion/dolce-and-gabbana-racist-earrings-392/#ixzz27ibkiiRD

September 26, 2012

Every time the fashion industry does something racist (and it happens pretty much all the time), we cover it and are inevitably shouted down by a chorus of smarter people who 1) all agree what racism is and 2) believe that [whatever X is] is, in fact, not racist. Moreover, every time we critisize someone or some brand for racism, we are called any number of names–usually along the lines of PC, stupid, or unfamiliar with words (“No, the Klan is racist,” which means that… that other stuff can’t be, we guess?). But our absolute favorite pseudo-argument is, “You’re racist for seeing it that way.” So, we’re cutting that off at the pass.

Because we are huge racists, we wanted to point out Dolce & Gabbana‘s new Spring 2013 earrings: busts of black women with exaggerated red lips, wearing bright turbans embellished with fruit (in the style of traditional blackamoors). We’ll let fellow racists Refinery29 take it away, “The luxury brand debuted a spring ’13 collection that rested heavily on the laurels of a long-lost colonial era, complete with all the cartoonish, debasing, subaltern imagery that would make even your politically incorrect Grandpa think twice.”

Though some of you will squabble about the difference between racism and tastelessness, we are of the opinion that fostering (and profiting off) negative ethnic stereotypes is racist. Especially in the context of a luxury brand owned by white men who’ve created a collection shown exclusively on white models, set against a nebulously “island” backdrop. But we could just be reading into it.

“Long-lost identities of slaves uncovered in old Virginia papers”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/05/us/virginia-slaves/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

February 5, 2012

A historical society in Virginia, where slavery began in the American colonies in 1619, has discovered the identities of 3,200 slaves from unpublished private documents, providing new information for today’s descendants in a first-of-its-kind online database, society officials say.

Many of the slaves had been forgotten to the world until the Virginia Historical Society received a $100,000 grant to pore over some of its 8 million unpublished manuscripts — letters, diaries, ledgers, books and farm documents from Virginians dating to the 1600s — and began discovering the long-lost identities of the slaves, said society president and CEO Paul Levengood.

The private, nonprofit historical society, the fourth-oldest in the nation, is assembling a growing roster of slaves’ names and other information, such as the slaves’ occupations, locations and plantation owners’ names, said Levengood.

The free, public website also provides a high-resolution copy of the antique documents that identify the slave.

The database, which went online last September with 1,500 names, sets itself apart from the few other existing slave databases — which limit themselves to specific plantations or to ship manifests that list the captives by their native African names, society officials said.

The “Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names” website is the first online resource listing slaves’ names across all of slaveholding Virginia, the nation’s oldest state which had the largest enslaved population, numbering a half million people, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, society officials said. ”Most slaves were by their owners’ design and eventually by law forbidden to learn how to read and write, so they didn’t leave us material that so many figures in the past did,” Levengood said. “That’s when you have to be creative.”

So using a $100,000 corporate grant from Dominion, one of the nation’s largest producers and transporters of energy, society researchers began examining some of its 8 million manuscripts that Virginia residents have been giving to the historical society since its founding in 1831.

Those Virginia families found the old, handwritten papers in attics, basements or desk drawers, Levengood said. The society stores the documents in an archive spanning thousands of square feet, he said. The antique papers turned out to mention slaves. ”Often they appeared in the records of the owners who owned slaves as human property, which to us sounds so obscene and alien,” said Levengood, who’s also a historian. “But these people were writing down their inventory as if you would for insurance purposes. That’s the kind of things that owners did with slaves. This was the most valuable property they owned, and they wanted to make sure it was recorded. ”Often there was a human connection, and they grew up with these people, and they recorded their birth dates and deaths. It’s an incredibly complicated and tragic institution that we’re just beginning to understand the dimensions of,” Levengood said.

Documents citing slaves go back to the 1690s: “That’s when slavery starts to grow fast in Virginia and other English colonies,” Levengood said. ”Sometimes it’s a real detective work. You have to read between the lines: Oh, they mention Amy in a letter, and then you have to read another letter in the collection to realize that Amy is a slave and not a family member,” Levengood said.

The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organization’s headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. While the online website is intuitive on how to use, the workshops are being held for users who need more guidance, Levengood said. Some 80 people came to Saturday’s workshop, including Gale Carter, a high school history teacher who flew in from East Chicago, Indiana for the event. Carter said the original documents digitized on the site will help her uncover more of her own family’s history in Virginia, as well as help her students learn about the era. ”I’m going to use this not only personally, but professionally,” she said. “This is terrific. It’s a model and I hope the rest of the states catch up real quickly.”

Amateur genealogist Crasty Johnson of Richmond said she hopes the sites will help her trace her roots back to the 1800s. ”I need to know my history,” she said, adding the site may help her prove or disprove many of the things she’s heard about her family’s past. “I wanted to really know. I wanted to be able to see and connect the dots.”

When the United States banned the importation of slaves after 1807, Virginia became the largest provider in the nation’s internal slave trade, Levengood said. Slavery was eventually abolished at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865.

That means many American families with slave ancestors could have roots in Virginia, Levengood said. ”Slavery in Virginia is not just a Virginia story. It reaches across all of the slave South,” Levengood said. “So you may not know you have Virginia ancestors, but you could.”

The database features a public message board, filled with notes posted by users searching for ancestors who may have been slaves. The advanced search fields include the slave’s first name or last name; gender; occupation; owner’s last name; date range; and record type.

One user named “Treebranch02″ wrote last September: “Well, I think I found the slave owner that owned my great, great, great grandfather but that is as far as I got. Nothing on my great grandfather and great grandmother who lived in Manquin, VA. This was good for me, however. Got me excited. Wonderful site.”

Elsewhere in the database is a stark description of the sale of slaves and goods in a February 11, 1858, typed letter from slaveholder William Daniel Cabell of “Benvenue” in Nelson County, Virginia, to his wife, Elizabeth Nicholas Cabell. ”The corn we sold yesterday brought 3.15$ per barrel. We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices — the whole amounting to $32016. Nearly every one of the negros were satisfied as they were bought by people in the country mostly, going ahead of the prices given by the traders,” Cabell wrote his wife. The letter continued: “Jane and three children brought $2795. and Mimy and three children $2505. My father gave $25. to Mr. Agee and then allowed Mr. Turner to take Mimy as he owned her husband. Old Mr. S. Turner bought Jane and children. Jane’s husband exclaimed just as she was knocked out to his master “Glory to God on high, peace and good will to men on earth” and it seemed to pop from his very soul. Betsy brought $1400. and was bought for Miss Perking of Buckingham.”

Robert Payne, who attended Saturday’s workshop, said he’s been researching his family for the past 15 years, but finding information about his ancestors wasn’t easy. He’s hoping his 12 grandchildren can benefit from his work. ”Researching black folk is difficult, so anytime you can find a new resource it’s always good to investigate,” he said. “It’s a database for the ones that are coming up. They’ll be able to take it and grow from that.”

“‘If Fred Got Two Beatings Per Day…’ Homework Asks”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/fred-got-two-beatings-per-day-homework-asks-230717586–abc-news.html

January 7, 2012

Third graders in in Gwinnett County, Ga., were given math homework Wednesday that asked questions about slavery and beatings.

Christopher Braxton told ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta that he couldn’t believe the assignment his 8-year-old son brought home from of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross. ”It kind of blew me away,” Braxton said. “Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He’s not answering this question.”

The question read, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” Another math problem read, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?” Another question asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled. ”I was furious at that point,” Braxton said.

“This outrages me because it just lets me know that there’s still racists,” said Stephanie Jones, whose child is a student at the school.

“Something like that shouldn’t be imbedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade,” parent Terrance Barnett told WSB-TV. “I’m having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts.”

“In this one, the teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity,” Gwinnett County school district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said. Roach said the teachers were attempting to incorporate social studies into math problems. ”We understand that there are concerns about these questions, and we agree that these questions were not appropriate,” she said.

Not For Sale

Around the world people have taken notice: the breath of freedom is uniting people. No longer can we stand by as 30 million people are enslaved.

It is no longer enough to think about change.
It is no longer enough to talk about change.
It is time to shift gears — marrying movement with intelligent action.

Our collective challenge is simple: Stand with those who are enslaved, work together to free them, and empower them in their freedom to break the cycle of vulnerability.

What we are combating is wide-ranging, deeply embedded, and largely invisible (how else could it exist in our own backyards?). A holistic, all-encompassing response is in order. Igniting and aiding this comprehensive response is the Not For Sale Campaign’s purpose.

The Not For Sale Campaign bridges knowledge to action.

With your help, we are working to raise awareness and collective understanding about human trafficking. But we live in a time and place where people are restless “to do something”. In recognition of this desire to act we will be completing and distributing handbooks for action. What can your athletics team do? What can your university do? What can your community of faith do? What can your business do? What can you do as a musician?

In 2009 and beyond we will be providing new ideas and proven constructs for action.

Without a doubt, the wall standing against slavery today consists of backyard abolitionists, people like yourself, who are willing to build the bridge to freedom.

Welcome to the movement.

For more information, check out http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

Slavery Footprint

A really graphically well-made website, simple, and really gets one thinking about our relationship with slavery. Who makes your make-up? Your electronics? Your food? Your soccer ball?

How many slaves work for you?

Your TOTAL SLAVERY FOOTPRINT represents the number of forced laborers that were likely to be involved in creating and manufacturing the products you buy. This is determined based on information regarding the processes used to create these products as well as investigations of the countries in which these stages of production take place for known slave labor (within these specific processes.) This number is compiled from multiple individual product scores (see below).

In order to create individual scores, we first chose to investigate slave labor usage in the supply chains of more than 400 of the most popular consumer products. 

http://slaveryfootprint.org/

“David Cameron urges people to report illegal immigrants”

UK Prime Minister David Cameron says he “wants everyone in the country” to help “reclaim our borders” by reporting suspected illegal immigrants.

Taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15235649

October 10, 2011

In a speech setting out measures to tighten immigration rules, Mr Cameron said people should report suspicions to Crimestoppers and the UK Border Agency. He also outlined plans to tackle forced and bogus marriages and for new rules for those wanting to settle in the UK. ”Together we will reclaim our borders and send illegal immigrants home.” Mr Cameron said: “If we take the steps set out today and deal with all the different avenues of migration, legal and illegal, then levels of immigration can return to where they were in the 1980s and 90s… a time when immigration was not a front rank political issue.” In his speech, the PM also said the government was to consult on making it a criminal offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to force a person to marry against their will.

‘Little more than slavery’

Earlier this year the Home Office rejected the idea amid fears victims might be put off coming forward. Mr Cameron announced plans to make it a criminal offence to breach orders imposed by the courts to prevent forced marriages taking place.

This already happens in Scotland.

Forced Marriage Protection Orders were introduced in 2008 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007. A potential victim, friend or police can apply for an order aimed at protecting an individual through the courts and anyone found to have breached one can be jailed for up to two years for contempt of court, although this is classed as a civil offence. The prime minister wants that changed, as well as a re-examination of proposals to create a specific criminal offence covering the act of trying to force someone into marriage.

In his speech, Mr Cameron said: “Forced marriage is little more than slavery. ”To force someone into marriage is completely wrong and I strongly believe this is a problem we should not shy away from addressing because of some cultural concerns.” Last year, a unit set up to tackle the problem dealt with 1,700 cases, but many more are thought to have gone unreported. The government says it is a breach of human rights to force someone to marry against their will for family advantage or to protect the perceived notion of a family’s honour.

However, in July the Home Office dismissed calls by the home affairs committee to make it an offence as ministers said it would be hard to prove and could have a negative effect on victims. Mr Cameron will now ask Home Secretary Theresa May to consult on criminalising forced marriage by working with support groups to ensure that such a move does not deter victims from coming forward. Mr Cameron announced tougher visa rules to weed out “bogus” marriages and other immigration abuses.

He also called for relatives joining their families in the UK to speak English and have enough cash to live on – by setting a minimum income level the person bringing relatives in must earn. He added that changes to the UK citizenship test were being planned to include questions about British history and culture. Mr Cameron said the government wanted to prevent immigrants becoming a burden on the taxpayer and dependant on welfare, and is considering forcing some applicants to pay financial bonds.

He highlighted the changes already made to the points based system introduced by the previous Labour government, and promised further changes to ensure a “hard-headed selection of genuinely talented individuals based on our national interest”. The old system was “a system which was totally unfair… where migrants got the choice to come, rather than us having the choice of migrants”.

‘Who are they going to tell?’

The prime minister added: “Of course, in the modern world, where people travel and communicate more easily than ever before and where families have connections all across the globe, people do want to move to different countries to be with loved ones. ”We all understand this human instinct. But we need to make sure – for their sake as well as ours – that those who come through this route are genuinely coming for family reasons, that they can speak English, and that they have the resources they need to live here and make a contribution here – not just to scrape by, or worse, to subsist on benefit.”

For Labour shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “While David Cameron talks about getting tough on illegal immigration, he is undermining our border enforcement by cutting 5,000 staff from the UK Borders Agency. And where he talks about limiting work visas, these actually went up under the Government’s immigration cap.” UK Independence Party home affairs spokesman Gerard Batten said: “It is all well and good asking the public to ‘shop’ illegal immigrants but who are they going tell? Police numbers are being significantly cut so I doubt they will have the resources to tackle it. Plus, over the next four years the UK Border Agency will see a reduction of just over a fifth of its personnel following a lack of funding.”

“Senate apologizes for discrimination against Chinese immigrants”

Taken from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/us-senate-apologizes-for-mistreatment-of-chinese-immigrants.html

October 7, 2011

The U.S. Senate has approved a resolution apologizing for the nation’s past discriminatory laws that targeted Chinese immigrants, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The resolution passed Thursday night, by unanimous consent, “cannot undo the hurt caused by past discrimination against Chinese immigrants, but it is important that we acknowledge the wrongs that were committed many years ago,” said Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), the lead sponsor.

A similar resolution, sponsored by Rep. Judy Chu (D-El Monte), the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, is pending in the House. It is backed by members of both parties. For Chu, the effort to get Congress to acknowledge the discrimination is personal; her grandfather faced the hostile laws. ”He decided to make something of his life anyway.  He opened up a small Chinese restaurant in Watts, and worked day and night and he was finally able to make ends meet,” Chu said Friday. “The thousands of Chinese Americans around this country with similar family histories will celebrate the passage of the Senate resolution.”

The Chinese Exclusion Act effectively halted Chinese immigration for a decade and denied U.S. citizenship to Chinese immigrants in the country. The law was repealed in 1943 after China became a U.S. ally in World War II. But Chu said that Congress has never apologized for the injustice. Brown took up the issue after hearing about how another Massachusetts senator, from the 19th Century, led the fight against the discriminatory laws, an aide said.

Congress has issued apologies before.

In 1988, President Reagan signed legislation providing $1.25 billion, or $20,000 each, in reparations and a formal apology for Japanese Americans interned during World War II. No reparations are offered in the measures apologizing for discrimination against Chinese immigrants.

In 2008, the House issued an apology to African Americans “on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow.” The Senate passed a similar resolution a year later.

In California, the Legislature in 2009 passed a resolution apologizing for the state’s discrimination against Chinese immigrants.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a cosponsor of the U.S. Senate resolution, said Friday she hopes the resolution will serve to “enlighten those who may not be aware of this regrettable chapter in our history and bring closure to the families whose loved ones live through this difficult time.”