Opinion: Bill Johnson to Filipinos: You shall be returned
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Sorry, Bill Johnson supporters, but your man really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Devoted Johnsonians will recall that the good judicial candidate first appeared on our radar screen thanks to his help with an effort to unseat a group of Latino jurists and get Filipino-Americans onto the bench. That effort was led by a minister in Carson, who explained his ambition:
‘When you’re running against a Caucasian, it’s kind of hard,’ the Rev. Ronald C. Tan of Carson said. ‘As Filipinos, our names are almost the same as Hispanics, so that puts us on co-equal ground.’
In Johnson’s book they’re already on co-equal ground. Amendment to the Constitution, the 1985 book written by Johnson under the alias ‘James O. Pace,’ presents the text of the proposed ‘Pace Amendment’ mandating expulsion of non-whites from the United States, along with an extensive, Federalist Papers-style unpacking of the proposed law’s text. Here’s what the book has to say on Filipinos in its explanation of how folks of various ethnicities will be sent packing:
Filipinos. The Filipinos are generally new arrivals, and many are still Philippine citizens. Accordingly, they can be repatriated without much difficulty. The Philippine government can be encouraged to assist.
This is more mildly worded than Pace’s suggestions for assorted Latinos (‘The Puerto Ricans should be returned to Puerto Rico,’ ‘Central Americans should be returned to Central America,’ ‘It should be noted that repatriation has become necessary primarily because of the abuses that the Hispanics have made of our system’). But while Pace allows that ‘Hispanic whites who are basically indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe, need not be repatriated,’ he is silent on the matter of Filipinos who can pass. (Are there any of those? Is there a whiteometer we can check?)
But I’d rather light a candle than curse anybody’s darkness. A few days ago our news side had an interesting story about the proliferation of headline-driven legislation bearing names like ‘R.J.’s Law,’ ‘Adam’s Law’ and so on.
Would the Pace Amendment have fared better if it had a nice round name attached?
‘Ziegfried’s Law,’ maybe?