Starting in the mid-19th century, Chinese immigrants began to move to the United States, most often to escape poverty and start their lives anew. Even though Chinese immigrants were only a small portion of those moving to the United States, Caucasian Americans, from average citizens to the government, reacted negatively to their arrival. For example, in 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country for ten years; the law was later extended and not repealed until 1943 (“Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts”). However, this did not end the dispute. The Chinese resisted, and opposing voices only grew louder. An influx of Chinese immigration to the United …show more content…
States in the late 19th century sparked a contentious debate involving the perspectives of Caucasian American citizens, the Chinese immigrants themselves, and the United States government at multiple levels. Typically, Caucasian American citizens viewed the Chinese as an inferior, corrupt group who took American jobs, and they treated the immigrants accordingly. Chinese immigrants were forced to work harder for considerably lower wages because they had little power; they desperately needed the money for their relatives and to pay debts (“Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts”). Employers obviously prefer less expensive labor, so many Caucasian workers thought the Chinese would push them out of jobs (“Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts”). The Chinese were seen as less deserving of employment, because there were many negative generalizations of them. Many thought the Chinese all feasted on “rats and dogs,” were addicted to opium and gambling, and were lepers (Ball). Even those who viewed the Chinese more favorably still stereotyped them. Reminiscing about Chinese servants, author Stewart Edward White wrote that one had to demonstrate precisely how to do a task the first time, because the servant would always do it the way you demonstrated (White). He based this and other general statements on his personal experiences with a few Chinese servants (White). White spoke of the servants the way one might speak about an intelligent dog, and others treated them like dogs, too. Another Caucasian speaking to a Chinese servant said, “Hullo, John! You likee ridee [sic] automobile? Huh? Heap much jiggle-jiggle up-and-down?” (White). The servant, clearly annoyed, responded, “Only occasionally, sir” (White). However, calling the Chinese intelligent was not always a compliment, either. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors complained in Resolution 17,673 that the Chinese were so skilled at entering the country illegally, it was “almost incredible” (Lee). These negative feelings about the Chinese resulted in harmful actions. In California after 1862, any testimony of a Chinese person in support of or opposition to a Caucasian was not admissible in court (“Racism and the Law”). Consequently, the perpetrators of the many riots against and murders of Chinese people were seldom punished. One such riot occurred in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1885 (Tichenor). A mob killed twenty-eight Chinese, and only a single “Chinese-owned building” was left standing (Tichenor). Some members of the mob were arrested, but were not prosecuted (“Whites massacre Chinese in Wyoming Territory”). This shows hatred of the Chinese people was so deep-seated that many were willing to kill to get rid of immigrants. Despite this, some Caucasians treated the Chinese as equals. One, Jake Hoyt, became the best friend of immigrant Wen He and they started a business together (Wen). Wen and Hoyt were exceptions in a culture of discrimination. Despite the discrimination Chinese immigrants faced, they still fought determinedly to reach the United States and adapt to Western culture. A life in the United States was comparatively better than poverty back in China (Lee). A main draw was gold, which attracted people from all over the world to California. Many Chinese called the United States a “Mountain of Gold,” and one second-generation immigrant said her father’s desire for those riches “was embedded in his mind” (Wen). Once immigrants did reach the United States, their communities affected the way they lived and perceived the country. Those living in Chinatowns, surrounded by people of the same race, usually retained more Chinese customs and disregarded American culture (Inouye and Honey). Conversely, those living around other races adopted more American customs and food, and became more skilled English speakers (Inouye and Honey). Those who lived among Caucasians likely faced more discrimination in their daily lives, and often attempted to change that. One man dressed in American attire in the hopes that it would prevent both physical attacks and being called “coolie,” a racial slur (Wen). Others took action to reduce discrimination in legislation and the policies of immigration officials. Some Chinese who were kept out of the country by immigration agents challenged the decision in court — and, in Northern California, won 80 percent of the time (Lee). Others, such as the Chinese Merchants Exchange, sent complaints to the United States government (Lee). When these pleas were ignored, the Chinese asked their own government for help, with one letter saying traders were detained for “weeks and months,” and the process of entering the United States caused “untold mental and financial suffering” (Lee). Nevertheless, the Chinese continued traveling to the United States, supporting each other mentally and financially along the way (Lee). Though the Chinese were often determined, hard workers, even the United States federal and state governments were against them; they showed this through both rhetoric and legislation.
At first, it seemed that the government might support the Chinese to a point; in 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed a bill that would have restricted immigrant arrivals to fifteen Chinese per vessel (“Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts”). However, this was only because the bill violated United States-China treaties, and the government soon amended those treaties to better control immigration (“Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts”). While some officials, like President Hayes, treated China carefully, other politicians made Chinese immigration their main issue. In the 1870s, Denis Kearney, an Irish immigrant himself, founded the Workingman’s Party whose slogan was “The Chinese Must Go!” (Tichenor). Though the Workingman’s Party was not successful long-term, its sentiments remained common among officials, from mayors to presidents. Some shared these thoughts at the 1901 Chinese Exclusion Convention in San Francisco (“Strong Addresses in Behalf of the Laboring People of the Coast”). At the event, Thomas Geary, author of the Geary Act, which extended the Chinese Exclusion Act, called the Chinese “the cheap man” (“Strong Addresses in Behalf of the Laboring People of the Coast”). This is likely because of their willingness to work for low wages. At the same …show more content…
convention, Mayor James D. Phelan of San Francisco, said supporters of Chinese immigration did not care about laborers’ integrity, and that an “influx of unlimited immigration would… destroy our civilization” (“Strong Addresses in Behalf of the Laboring People of the Coast”). Mayor Phelan did not consider that the Chinese and Caucasians could be equal in mind and character; he felt no need to explain why they were immoral, because few questioned racial discrimination. California governor Leland Stanford’s comments had a similar tone when he called the Chinese “degraded” and pledged to save jobs for Caucasians (Tichenor). However, Chinese immigrants worked for his businesses (Tichenor). This demonstrates that politicians’ views reflected those of the people; in order to win elections, they often just said what voters — male Caucasian citizens — wanted to hear. Throughout the 19th century and continuing into the 20th, Chinese immigration to the United States caused an uproar. Caucasian Americans mostly reacted to the Chinese with hostility, the Chinese resisted this, and state and federal governments sided with the Caucasians. The reasons Caucasian Americans gave/listed to keep the Chinese out of the country, such as stereotypes and unproven complaints about immorality, were often illogical. Their worries about losing jobs were sensible, but the Chinese often performed work that few Americans desired anyway. Additionally, the violent way the Chinese were received was a disproportionate response to complaints about them. Chinese immigrants simply wished to improve their lives by moving from their home country to the United States, and most challenged barriers they faced peacefully. However, the government, pressured by United States citizens, established anti-Chinese policies based on the same concerns; it was also complacent in the violence against Chinese people. The Chinese, like many immigrants before and after them, deserved more respect and safety than they received. Works Cited Ball, Jane L. "Immigrant Stereotyping in the U.S." Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2013. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=t6o&AN=89551530. Accessed 29 March 2018. “Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts.” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State, 2016, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration.
Accessed 26 March 2018. Inouye, Karin Mei Li and David B. Honey. “Fighting Cross-Cultural Battles: The Chinese-American Assimilation Experience.” Brigham Young University, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 23 Oct. 2013, http://jur.byu.edu/?p=7933. Accessed 26 March 2018. Lee, Erika. "Enforcing and Challenging Exclusion in San Francisco." Chinese America: History & Perspectives, Jan. 1997, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=9704174271&authtype=geo&geocustid=s8475741&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 27 March 2018. “Racism and the Law.” Digital History, Digital History, 2016, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook_print.cfm?smtid=3&psid=17. Accessed 8 April 2018. “Strong Addresses in Behalf of the Laboring People of the Coast.” The San Francisco Call, vol. 90, no. 175, 22 November 1901, p. 1. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress, n.d., https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-11-22/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1901&index=1&date2=1901&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn86064451&lccn=sn85066387&words=Chinese+CHINESE+CONVENTION+convention+Convention+Exclusion+exclusion+EXCLUSION&proxdistance=5&state=California&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=“Chinese+Exclusion+Convention”&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1. Accessed 6 April
2018. Tichenor, Daniel. "Same Old Song." Nation, vol. 283, no. 6, 28 Aug. 2006, p. 25. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=21886539&authtype=geo&geocustid=s8475741&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 28 March 2018. Wen, Zhengde. "Breaking Racial Barriers: Wo Kee Company." Chinese America: History & Perspectives, Jan. 2005, p. 13. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=19424091&authtype=geo&geocustid=s8475741&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 28 March 2018. White, Stewart Edward. "My Ming Collection." Saturday Evening Post, vol. 206, no. 11, 09 Sept. 1933, p. 12. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=18204871&authtype=geo&geocustid=s8475741&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 26 March 2018. “Whites Massacre Chinese in Wyoming Territory.” History, A&E Television Networks, 2009, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/whites-massacre-chinese-in-wyoming-territory. Accessed 11 April 2018.
Many came for gold and job opportunities, believing that their stay would be temporary but it became permanent. The Chinese were originally welcomed to California being thought of as exclaimed by Leland Stanford, president of Central Pacific Railroad, “quiet, peaceable, industrious, economical-ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work” (Takaki 181). It did not take long for nativism and white resentment to settle in though. The Chinese, who started as miners, were taxed heavily; and as profits declined, went to work the railroad under dangerous conditions; and then when that was done, work as farm laborers at low wages, open as laundry as it took little capital and little English, to self-employment. Something to note is that the “Chinese laundryman” was an American phenomenon as laundry work was a women’s occupation in China and one of few occupations open to the Chinese (Takaki 185). Chinese immigrants were barred from naturalized citizenship, put under a status of racial inferiority like blacks and Indians as with “Like blacks, Chinese men were viewed as threats to white racial purity” (188). Then in 1882, due to economic contraction and racism Chinese were banned from entering the U.S. through the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese were targets of racial attacks, even with the enactment of the 1870 Civil Rights Act meaning equal protection under federal law thanks to Chinese merchants lobbying Congress. Chinese tradition and culture as well as U.S. condition and laws limited the migration of women. Due to all of this, Chinese found strength in ethnic solidarity as through the Chinese Six Companies, which is considered a racial project. Thanks to the earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco, the Chinese fought the discriminatory laws by claiming citizenship by birth since the fires
Nayan Shah is a leading expert in Asian American studies and serves as professor at the University of California. His work, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown explores how race, citizenship, and public health combined to illustrate the differences between the culture of Chinese immigrants and white norms in public-health knowledge and policy in San Francisco. Shah discusses how this knowledge impacted social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Contagious Divides investigates what it meant to be a citizen of Chinese race in nineteenth and twentieth-century San Francisco.
One particular ethnic group that suffered severe discrimination was the Chinese people. They first came to America for several reasons. One of them was the gold rush in California in 1849, in which they were included in a group of immigrants called the “Forty-Niners” (179). From gold mining, they switched to other jobs with resulted in the rise of anti-Chinese sentiments. People felt that Chinese people were taking the jobs away from them, because Chinese people worked for much smaller salaries that businesses preferred. This mindset gave way to the creation of The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882, which prohibits more Chinese immigrants from coming to America. In addition, the act states “no State or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship”. Like the Naturalization Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act was created to hinder Chinese people from becoming citizens so that America could remain homogenously white (186). It also aimed to stop Chinese people from establishing a bigger community in the country in hopes of eliminating the threat of competition to their white counterparts (186). Like African-Americans, Chinese people were considered racially inferior and have struggled to prove that they were worthy to be called true Americans, rather than
The treatment of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans is often overlooked as the struggles of other ethnic groups in the United States take center stage in history. Many remember the plight of African-Americans and their struggle over basic civil liberties during the 19th and 20th centuries in America. However we shouldn’t forget that the Chinese were another group heavily discriminated against with the use of legal racism in the form of laws violating basic human rights and Sinophobe sentiments held by the American populace. After the “fall” of China to communism, anti-Chinese sentiments were only exacerbated due to the second Red Scare and the Communist witch hunts that it created. People of Chinese descent were another unfortunate target of racism in America’s long history of legalized racism.
The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 encouraged Chinese immigration for work on railroads and southern plantations while simultaneously withholding the privilege of naturalization. This encouraged the emergence of ‘coolie’ laborers, whose passage into the United States was paid for under the agreement that they would work as indentured servants for a pre-determined period of time. Although the Chinese helped build the transcontinental railroad, their unusual style of dress still created prejudice against their ethnicity. This lead to the creation of Chinatowns as a necessary cultural barrier used for protection against the rest of society. After encouraging Chinese immigration, the government realized that these immigrants would procreate and needed to decide what immigration status children born in America would hold. The Naturalization Act of 1870 was the solution to this question, declaring any child born in the United States a citizen of the country, regardless of the race of the child. This necessarily lead to more immigration restrictions since a...
At the very beginning, “The Chinese were welcome in California in the mid 1800’s because there was a lot of work and not enough workers, but Chinese people had to live separately from Americans. When the economic conditions got worse, discrimination against the Chinese increased” (The History of Chinese Immigration to the United States). Yes the Chinese were welcomed at first, but the Nativists only used them for a little and wanted the Chinese gone. Once they saw things getting worse within the country and started calling them exorcist and demonic because they worked really hard and put up The Chinese Exclusion act so they could stop them from going into the
According to Lee, Erika, and Reason (2016), “The Chinese Exclusion Act ...barred Chinese laborers for a period of 10 years and allowed entry only to certain exempt classes (students, teachers, travelers, merchants, and diplomats” (p. 4). The Chinese immigrants were excluded from certain rules and laws like Blacks and other minority groups. Also, they were not permitted to request citizenship or settle in the United States. For decades, the Chinese laborers did not have legal rights to enter into the United States until the decision was overturned. Lee, Erika, and Reason noted, “Chinese activist turned their attention to opening up additional immigration categories within the confines of the restrictions…some 300,000 Chinese were admitted into the United States as returning residents and citizens” (p. 4). The activists fought for the rights of the Chinese people to overturn the decision for leaving and entering as pleased to the United
...e arms, which was largely due to their passion for work, diligent nature, and willingness to work for less money than others. Chinese workers played a significant role in both the internal development and economic enhancement of California, particularly with the successful completion of the Central Pacific Railroad in May 1869. As immigrants, the Chinese greatly changed the nature of the West from a purely social perspective, through the establishment of new languages, religions, and cultural customs. Over time, Chinese workers faced poverty and significant anti-Chinese sentiment, which severely limited their participation after the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Despite facing these challenges, however, the Chinese labor force intensified the multicultural nature of Western society and distinctly helped to shape the American West as we know it today.
The first Chinese immigrants to arrive in America came in the early 1800s. Chinese sailors visited New York City in the 1830s (“The Chinese Experience”); others came as servants to Europeans (“Chinese Americans”). However, these immigrants were few in number, and usually didn’t even st...
A nativist minister during the 1870’s gave this testimony during a Congressional hearing on Chinese immigration, “Coolieism, with very slight exceptions, leaves the Chinese just what they were in their native land, with all their idolatry, immorality, vice, and heathen customs, habits, dress, tastes, prejudices, and most unacquirable language a large, distinct class of people, adverse to all that is American.
When the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law in May 1882, it was followed by a rapidly decreasing amount of new immigrants to the United States. Regardless of problems that the United States attempted to solve with the Act, violent massacre and persecution of Chinese people in the United States continued. Because of this, many Chinese immigrants that did stay in America continued on for years to receive prejudice and racism in the labor market and cultural society. This then continued to force many Chinese immigrants further and further down the path of segregation and into the protection of Chinatowns and poverty, counteracting the great American idea of the “melting pot.”
The Chinese immigrant experience has traveled through times of hardships, under the English man. They have struggled to keep themselves alive through racism, work, and acceptance. Although many have come to Canada for their lives’ and their children’s to be successful, and safe. It could not be just given until adversity gave them the life they hoped to one day life for. In the starting time of 1858, the Chinese community had started coming to different parts of Canada considering the push and pull factors that had led them here. Because of the lack of workers in the British Columbia region, the Chinese were able to receive jobs in gold mining. Most Chinese were told to build roads, clear areas, and construct highways, but were paid little because of racism. The Chinese today are considered one of the most successful races in Canada because of the push and pull factors that they had come across, the racism that declined them and the community of the Chinese at the present time.
Regarded as unassimilable, Asian immigrants were systematically discriminated by way of American immigration policies. The earliest policy enforced that overtly excluded groups of individuals based on racial categorization was passed in 1882. This was known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. As the years went by, hostile sentiments towards Asians fostered and eventually manifested themselves in the Immigration Act of 1924. In response to these discriminating policies, prospective immigrants sought alternate routes to America, often involving the channel of human smuggling. Despite the presence of human smuggling prior to the late 20th century, heightened awareness of this exploit resulted from the media sensation around the Golden Venture ship,
Kwong, Peter. 1999 “Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor” Publisher: The New Press.
From the 1800’s to 1900’s, the Chinese struggled immensely to earn a place in America. They wanted the same as any other Irishman, German, or Englishman, a job to make money to survive. When Chinese people set foot into the U.S, they were not welcomed with open arms. Instead they were targeted and attacked. There were many disputes on whether these immigrants should be here or deported home. Around the 1870’s, many people took violent approaches toward them and caused a number of deaths. As the Chinese population increased to over 100,000 people, congress and president Chester A. Arthur decided to terminate them in 1822, resulting in a massive change. They felt like the image of America was slipping away because that image didn’t consist of Chinese immigrants.