When the Chinese came to America, they “endured a racial regime every day. This book is the story of that regime and the lives it touched.” They arrived in the 1850s, and the western states regulated “their ability to work, operate a business, own property, testify in court, seek education, and form families.”
Chinese laborers—whether miners or workers in lumbering or agriculture—were subjected to violence and taxed because of their race. When over 20,000 arrived in 1852, the California legislature implemented the miner’s tax. Over fifteen years, the state collected $5 million, 99% of it paid by Chinese laborers. Many, however, realized that the tax “provided a path to conditional inclusion.”
This Bancroft Award–winning academic history is structured so that each chapter focuses on one aspect of Chinese immigrants and the pushback from whites. Thus, the chapters on aliens and predators focus on laws targeting non-white foreigners and those vigorously opposing interracial intimacy.
In the 1880s, a major effort was made by the Pacific Coast states to expel the Chinese. The federal government promised laws at the border, but vigilante justice “dislocated tens of thousands.” “The anti-Chinese expulsions that swept the West from 1885 to 1887 ushered in a new period of racial retrenchment.” Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1888 (not repealed until 1943), banning all laborers from entering. Local authorities initiated segregation but confronted constitutional roadblocks. Individuals committed consistent violence to keep Chinese communities out and often turned to arson. Oftentimes, entire neighborhoods were torn down under public health pretexts. Courts approved of “separate but equal” public schools. However, “whether they liked it or not, both lawmakers and the public had come to rely on Chinese workers, traders, consumers, manufacturers, businesses, and taxpayers.”
Early in the 20th century, “exclusion laws gave federal officials broad authority over Chinese migrants, power that state and local officials lacked.” Chinese arrivals were required to pass through Angel Island, the West Coast equivalent of Ellis Island. The threat of refusal of entry and the risk of deportation were part of everyone’s experience. The San Francisco earthquake in 1906 destroyed the city’s birth records, leading to endless claims of U.S. citizenship, as an 1898 Supreme Court case confirmed that birthright citizenship applied to the Chinese. Because for decades white America paid little heed to the proper spelling of Chinese names, many slipped into an in-between space where they were allowed to stay but not exercise all of their rights. They lived in fear of government bureaucrats. Such insecurities affected every aspect of life. “By rendering the Chinese as perpetually precarious, exclusion restricted economic mobility, restrained Chinese political power, devalued Chinese lives and culture, and separated Chinese from white communities.”
The prohibition of Chinese immigration was extended to the Japanese, Koreans, and other Asians. “The Chinese continued to live under specific economic, political, cultural, and spatial restraints.” Matters changed slowly over time, and it was not until the 1965 immigration law that all restraints on Asians were lifted. Today, there are 24 million Asian Americans in the United States. It should be noted that this law was pioneered by Jewish Congressman Emmanuel Celler, who served in Congress for 50 years and had seen the 1920s restrictive laws implemented. Although prejudice and tribalism still exist in America, Chinese Americans are free to pursue the American dream and have been quite successful in that effort.
I am very familiar with the history of immigration on the East Coast, particularly the plight of the Irish, Italians, and Jews who came to America in the 19th century. They were all treated badly because of their foreign languages and non-Protestant religions. But compared to the Chinese, they were welcomed with open arms. This story is not surprising, but it is shocking in its severity.
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