At the time of segragation in US how non-blacks were treated?

Question

I am interested to know how Asians, Mexicans, or Middle eastern people were treated. I know most of those people immigrated here after 70s but they were some of those races living in US. Could they eat with white and so on? or did they have to go with blacks?

Answer 1

All of those groups were in America long before the 70's. Especially the Chinese - They were exploited and used as cheap labor for the railroads.... they were treated awfully. Politicians fought over what to do with them, as far as citizenship, immigration, exportation - it was messy. Are you aware that in US history, the Chinese are the only race/nationality to have been banned from immigration (it stood for 10 years!)?!

That being said... there were people biased against all races and nationalities... each race or nationality didn't like some other race or nationality... but no, as you say "Asian, Mexicans and Middle eastern people" were not humiliated and segregated like blacks were.

Answer 2

I lived in a small western town. Mexicans and American Indians were subject to discrimination in housing. There were no separate facilities in restaurants of stores, but I think they were made to feel unwelcome in many places.There were 4 grammar schools and one was almost all Mexican in the poor section of town. There was only one High School, but for the most part there was not much socializing between groups. There was an American Indian family that bought a house in my neighborhood. It cause some uproar,but in the end they stayed. I later became friend with one of the children, much to my parent disapproval. A black family with a high school aged son moved to town, and he became very popular. Most of us had never met any one black before and we thought he was interesting. When I went to college in the east, I found segregated black neighborhoods and it was American Indians were the ones thought to be interesting, and little discrimination against Hispanics. Recently I read an article by a Black reporter who went to North Dakota. He said that he was welcomed but American Indians were subject to discrimination, so not much has changed in the last 50 years in the small town west..

Answer 3

In my little town in Mississippi, there was an influx of Chinese immigrants and a question of which school they should go to. My parents/grandparents pushed for including them in the whites-only school, and subsequently the children of those Chinese immigrants were some of my buddies. We also had a few people of Mexican and Cuban descent in our circle of friends and classmates. In the "freedom of choice" days, the few people of African-American descent who went to my high school all seemed to come with a chip on their shoulders, and of course they didn't have any trouble finding rednecks to be tense with, so the relationship was always somewhat strained. I don't think my experience was exactly typical, though, because about a tenth of my high school class were National Merit semi-finalists, and the large majority of my class went on to finish college and more.

Answer 4

I know Chinese were discriminatwed against in Early California History, they made them live in their own area of the city Chinatown and forbade them from seeking jobs outside of Chinatown.