At the start of the 20th century, “Orientals” had been long the subject of popular racial antagonism, violence and state and federal legislative and judicial action as amply presented in the Asian
and Filipino American Brief Historical Chronology (again linked below). The majority of Oriental population was in Hawai’I and the West Coast.
While the philosophical idealism of democracy is held high throughout the political discourse in American history, class, gender, and race – sometimes individually, often in combination – are
controlling factors that push or pull the direction of US social development away from “liberty and justice for all” as stated in the Pledge of Allegiance [adopted in the midst of the rising tide
of nationalism, arch-conservatism and anti-liberalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance)].

Return for a closer look at the social, legal and political actions taken against “non-whites” and “Orientals”: specifically identify laws and judicial decisions that clearly demonstrate the
contradictions between the notion of a democratic America and the social, economic and political reality for “racial minorities” in the US through World War II.