Racism’s targets were once Italians and Asians, both vilified by President Woodrow Wilson

Ethnic bigotry is ugly regardless of the race of the target. Here’s a quote from a book by Woodrow Wilson, at that time a professor at Princeton and later president of the United States: “Throughout the [nineteenth] century men of the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe had made up the main strain of foreign blood which was every year added to the vital working force of the country … but now there came multitudes of men of the lowest class from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence; and they came in numbers which increased from year to year, as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population” (Source: “A History of the American People,” by Woodrow Wilson, 1902).

It’s often said that Wilson improved his views in later years, or at least moderated them in response to political realities when he ran for public office, first the New Jersey governorship and later the American presidency. However, he simply exchanged one set of bigoted attitudes for another, apparently deciding that he wanted Italian and Eastern European votes in New Jersey where those ethnic groups were increasing…