1. How does intersectionality help us to understand the experience of early
Asian immigrants to the US? How were these early immigrants depicted in
the US and what were some different experiences of exclusion based on
gender and nationality? At the minimum, cite Gary Okihiro (Imperial
Republic, Hawaii, and/or California), Erika Lee, and Dollar a Day, Ten Cents
a Dance.
(1) The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, who explains, “It’s
basically a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality
often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race
inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or
immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of
these.”
“它基本上是一个透镜，一个棱镜，用于观察各种形式的不平等经常一起运
作并相互加剧的方式。我们倾向于将种族不平等与基于性别，阶级，性取向
或移民身份的不平等分开。经常缺少的是，有些人如何受到所有这些的影
响。”
(2) intersectionality in the experience of early Asian immigrants to the US: race
inequality with gender, class, nationality, immigrant status inequality ect.
(3) Intersectionality is the recognition that multiple forms of identity intersect with
each other to create complex identities that have different experience.
(4) Depiction: evil, threat, inferior, unarmed invasion, etc.
(5) Chinese is the largest group of non-white immigrants to come to the US. In the
late 1800s.
(6) Reported as heartens, sneaky and dishonest.
(7) Economic insecurities among white laborers.
(8) A sexual and moral threat.
(9) Experience based on gender: male >> female, family and reproduction, sex
worker, The Page Law and the Chinese Exclusion Act., working demand, …
(10) Experience based on nationality: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hawaii, South
Asian, Filipinos, etc.
2. What is the connection between yellow peril, Chinese exclusion, and Japanese
internment? Think about the depictions of Asian Americans; who benefits,
who doesn’t, who is creating this depiction, what message these depictions are
sending to the general public about Asian Americans. At the minimum, cite
Erica Lee, Leslie Hatamiya, and Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred
Koramatsu Story.
(1) Chinese exclusion and the Japanese Internment are the continuation of the Yellow
Peril. Yellow Peril fueled the Chinese exclusion.
(2) Yellow Peril is a product of imperialism.
(3) About religion and race: non-Christian -> lacked basic morals and as such would
be detrimental to American society
(4) Chinese labors came to the West Coast in mid-19 century
(5) From the brute violence to law: The Page Law and 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
(6) Chinese exclusion -> more Japanese labors
(7) Japanese brings socioeconomic competition -> the exclusion movement is a
critical aspect of pre-World War II history that paved the way for the wartime
incarceration of Japanese Americans
(8) Asian Americans have long been considered as a threat to a nation that promoted a
whites-only immigration policy.
(9) “Yellow Peril”: unclean and unfit for citizenship in America. The fear of Asian
takeover. Origin: Mongolian invasion of Europe.
(10) Asian seen as dangerous, alien, and unable to assimilate to the US.
(11) Used to justify imperialism and exclusion of Asian from US entry and citizenty.
(12) There are many anti-Chinese violence in 1880s.
3. How is the “gatekeeping ideology” related to the building of the US as an
“imperial republic”? In answering this question, reflect on how Asian
migration to the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries was subjected to
various legal, social, and cultural tools of exclusion, control, and surveillance.
At the minimum, cite Gary Okihiro (Imperial Republic, Hawaii, and/or
California), Erika Lee, and Leslie Hatamiya in your answer.
(1) The US began as a product of English expansion into the Atlantic world and as a settler
colony that appropriated lands from American Indians through treaties as well as through
the violence of conquest.
(2) Imperialism is the central feature of American history.
(3) Chinese laborers were required in the construction of railroad and the development of
agriculture.
(4) Ideology fortified such imperialist arguments for material gains. Racism justified the
conquest and colonization of inferior, backward peoples, and these projects were further
infused with religious fervor.
(5) “Gate” and “gatekeeper” depict the control of immigrant laborers.
(6) Legal tool: laws…, Japanese internment, immigration laws…
(7) Social: violence, assault, …
(8) Culture: Yellow peril, Dr. Fu Manchu …
(9) “Gatekeeper ideology”: legalized and reinforced restricting, excluding and deporting
“undesired” immigrants.
(10) Exclusion is used to help define the US’s national identity
(11) Chinese exclusion highlights the limits of American democracy.
(12) The idea behind yellow peril and gatekeeping are applied to other immigrant groups in
the US.
Keywords:
Ancestors in Americas: Coolies, Sailors, Settlers (Film)
- Asian immigrants
- The first program of ANCESTORS IN THE AMERICAS travels across oceans and
centuries of time to trace the globally interlocking story of East and West – from a village
in Guangdong Province and Spanish military barracks in Manila to a Chinese cemetery in
Havana and the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
- COOLIES, SAILORS AND SETTLERS explores how and why people from the
Philippines, China and India first arrived on the shores of North and South America, and
it portrays their survival amid harsh conditions, their re-migrations, and finally their
permanent settlement in the New World.
Manifest Destiny 天命论
-
Created by John O’Sullivan
Fueled by imperialism
Justified through religion (Christianity)
-
Expansion of territory 领土扩张 ends up challenging the idea of the US being of one
race/origin
- New territories are comprised of non-white peoples
- Indigenous people become “aliens”
- Eg. Hawaii
Coolie
- Need for labor / Demand of capitalism
- Indentured laborers from India & China
Little Brown Brother
- Filipinos are required from the Spanish American War
- Not US citizens
- Not restricted in their ability to travel and work in the US
Page Act
- 1875, the first restrictive federal immigration law in the US
- Effectively prohibited the entry of Chinese women
- Marking the end of open borders
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
- Banned immigration by Chinese men
- The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats.
- Building on the earlier Page Act of 1875, which banned Chinese women from migrating
to the United States
- 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the only law ever implemented to prevent all members
of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States
Gentleman’s Agreement
- An informal and legally non-binding agreement between two or more parties.
- The essence of a gentlemen's agreement is that it relies upon the honor of the parties 1917
Asiatic Barred Zone Act
Tydings McDuffie Act
- officially the Philippine Independence Act
- It also established limitations on Filipino immigration to the United States.
Intersectionality
- The recognition that multiple forms of identity intersect with each other to create complex
identities that have different experience
- Eg. Race, gender, religion, …
Delano Grape Strike (Larry Itliong)
- 1965, grape pickers demand high wage and rights to unionize labor
- Coalition between Filipino and Mexican farmworkers.
Bachelor Societies
Taxi Dance Halls
Watsonville Riots
- The Watsonville riots was a period of racial violence that took place in Watsonville,
California, from January 19 to 23, 1930.
- Involving violent assaults on Filipino American farm workers by local residents opposed
to immigration, the riots highlighted the racial and socioeconomic tensions in California's
agricultural communities.
Anti-Miscegenation Laws 反异族通婚法
-
Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at
the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and
sometimes also sex between members of different races.
-
-
Anti-miscegenation laws were first introduced in North America from the late
seventeenth century onwards by several of the Thirteen Colonies, and subsequently, by
many U.S. states and U.S. territories and remained in force in many US states until 1967.
After the Second World War, an increasing number of states repealed their antimiscegenation laws. In 1967, in landmark case Loving v. Virginia, the remaining antimiscegenation laws were held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court under
Chief Justice Earl Warren
Dollar a Day, Ten Cents a Dance: A Historic Portrait of Filipino Farmworkers in America
- Presents a portrait of Filipino farm laborers who came to the United States in the 1920s
and 1930s expecting a more prosperous life-style.
Yellow Peril
- The fear of Asian takeover
- Asian seen as dangerous, alien, and unable to assimilate to the West/ US.
- Used to justified imperialism
- Used to justify exclusion of Asian from US entry and citizenry
- Charlie Chan & Dr. Fu Manchu
- Dragon Ladies & Lotus Blossoms
Angel Island
- Angel Island is an island in San Francisco Bay.
- The Angel Island Immigration Station, on the northeast corner of the island, which has
been designated a National Historic Landmark, was where officials detained, inspected,
and examined approximately one million immigrants, who primarily came from Asia.
- Under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first United States law to restrict a group of
immigrants based on their race, nationality, and class, all arriving Chinese immigrants
were to be examined by immigration or customs agents.
Paper Sons and Daughters
- Falsely claim membership to a group
- Fake documentation
Alien Land Laws
- Asian restricting in owing land
- 1913 California Land Law
- By 1923, many states had all adopted Alien Land Law
COVID-19 Anti-Asian Hate
Executive Order 9066
-
二战中监禁日裔、德意、意裔美国人
Japanese Internment
- Japanese American internment, the forced relocation by the U.S. government of
thousands of Japanese Americans to detention camps during World War II.
- That action was the culmination of the federal government’s long history of racist and
discriminatory treatment of Asian immigrants and their descendants that had begun with
restrictive immigration policies in the late 1800s.
- After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941, the U.S. War
Department suspected that Japanese Americans might act as saboteurs or espionage
agents, despite a lack of hard evidence to support that view.
Alien Enemy
- In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject
of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in
conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed. Usually,
the countries are in a state of declared war.
Issei
-
第一代移民的日本人
Nisei
-
第二代移民的日本人
JACL (Japanese American Citizen League)
Loyalty Questionnaire, Question 27 & 28
- Q27: Will you serve in the US army forces?
- Q28: Will you pledge allegiance to the US?
No No Boys
- Sent to Tule Lake
- No-No Boy is a 1957 novel, and the only novel published by the Japanese American
writer John Okada.
- It tells the story of a Japanese-American in the aftermath of the internment of Japanese
Americans during World War II.
Fred Korematsu
- a US citizen refused to comply with EO 9066
- discovered and arrested
- found guilty of denying military orders
Civil Liberties Act of 1988
- signed by President Reagan in 1988
-
Gave monetary restitution of $20,000 each to about 80,000 survivors of Japanese
American internment
Reconfirmed the constitutional and civil rights of all US citizens.
Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (Film)
- This is an excellent film that shows the difficult plight of the Japanese American citizens
during World War II. The interviews are excellent and the story line is concise and
captivating. I loved this documentary and would highly recommend it.
- On the political message of the film, much has changed in the years since World War II;
but that it took Fred Koramatsu nearly 50 years to receive his moral, political and legal
vindication from the United States Government that had imprisoned him because of his
ancestry during the great World War says much about our society then as well as today.
- This moving and engrossing documentary reveals the untold story of the 40-year legal
fight to vindicate Korematsu – one that finally turned a civil injustice into a civil rights
victory.
Readings:
Gary Okihiro: “Imperial Republic”
(1) intro
(13) Refer to the US as “imperial republic” because the nation began as a product of English
expansion into the Atlantic world and as a settler colony that appropriated lands from
American Indians through treaties as well as through the violence of conquest.
(14) Imperialism is a central feature of American history.
(15) The nation’s westward expansion and the absorption of novel lands and people post
challenges to the founding narrative of a common descent and racial homogeneity. The
narration established the nation’s people as a homo race of whites.
(16) Those immigrants supplied the labor required for the economic transformation that
included the rise of factories and manufacturing industries and an expanding network of
roads, canals, and railroad tracks.
(2) Manifest Density
- 1845 by writer John O’Sullivan
- Describe the ideology that contend that God and history had preordained the spread of the
US across the entire continent.
-
-
-
Fanned by the flames of nationalism and the imperatives of capitalism in the 1840s,
manifest destiny drove the nation’s border westward to the Pacific.
In the late nineteenth century, unprecedented numbers of immigrants
Workers struggled against trusts and monopolies, and out West farmers set up
cooperatives and organized against government controls and railroad barons. Often the
white working class blamed immigrants and peoples of color for their troubles, especially
during the economic crisis and resulting panic of the 1890s.
Mirroring that wider fear of aliens, in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The language of the act suggests that order is the preferred state, and Chinese workers, as
perpetual aliens, introduce disorder and danger.
Ideology fortified such imperialist arguments for material gains. Racism justified the
conquest and colonization of inferior, backward peoples, and these projects were further
infused with religious fervor.
Gary Okihiro: “Hawaii”
(1) Asian Intro
- The world-system, with its transits of goods and labor, precipitated and benefi ted from
turmoil in Asia. The nineteenth century in East Asia—China, Japan, and Korea—
witnessed discontent among peasants over government corruption, abuses, and taxes.
- It was also marked by widespread anxieties over the incursion of European capitalists,
military expeditions, and Christian missionaries.
- Colonization in the Philippines and India introduced changes in the domestic economy
and in the minds of colonial subjects.
- China: The First Opium War, Taiping Rebellion of 1850 …
- Japan: Westernization/modernization.
- Korea: be dependent on Japanese capitalism
- Foreign invasion aof ideologies and capitalism
(2) China
- Coolies came to Hawaii’s sugar plantation with Indian coolies.
- Chinese laborers frequently protested the abuse.
(3) Japan
- Chinese extension and Japan’s western contact -> more Japanese laborers.
- “Gentleman’s agreement” by Jap governments and ambassadors: stop giving passport to
Chinese.
- The entry of women and formation of families established roots and greater performance.
- Japanese migrant workers organized strikes to improve wages and working conditions,
and their children fled the plantations for other opportunities.
(4) Korea
- In response to planter anxieties over Chinese exclusion and growing Japanese numbers
and labor militancy.
- No restriction to Korean labors.
(5) Filipino
- To compete with and ultimately supplant Korean and Japanese worker.
(6) Migrant labor
- Different social formation has different needs for laborers.
- Plantation preferred a relatively stable labor force and accommodated migrant families.
- West Coast preferred more seasonal and transient in nature.
- Women were useful for they providing cheap labor and enabling the reproduction of
labor.
Gary Okihiro: “California”
(1) Intro
- The significant gender imbalance among all Asian migrant groups
- Testifies to the gendered work requirements of railroad construction and agricultural
labor and the desire to reduce the social costs of Asian labor by culling members of the
community considered unproductive by employers, such as women, children, and the
elderly.
- The Chinese worked as an organized crew, unlike the white laborers who operated as
individuals.
(2) Hawaii
- The transoceanic exchange of trade and labor underscore the separations and
convergences of nations, regions and peoples.
(3) Chinese
- California’s Gold Rush drew miners from around the world.
- The First Opium War and the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which settled that war, had
legalized the coolie trade, which transported thousands of Chinese to America.
- Chinese, like other people of color in the United States, possessed no rights except those
that whites chose to give them.
- “Nature has marked as inferior…have impassable difference.”
- Harassment from the state and the hostility from both individuals and the groups.
- Chinese minors moved on frequently, driven by anti-Chinese statutes and hostile whites.
- Chinese are hard-working, capable, dependable and mobile. The wage fell below those
paid to whites.
- These skilled Chinese railroad workers were indispensable to U.S. economic and
territorial expansion.
- Chinese migrant labor was crucial not only for railroad construction but also for the
development of the agrarian West.
- Because of the demand of labor demand, the 19 century Chinese California population
was overwhelmingly male. Women were scarce except for sex workers.
- Most women were part of an organized trade, lured and bound by contract, and
transported to the United States for sex work in mining, railroad, and agricultural camps.
- The Page Law banned female Chinese, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited
entry to Chinese laborers.
(4) Japanese
- Came to California as political refugees and settlers.
- Finally, the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1908 ended Japanese labor migration.
- Like Chinese laborers, the gender rate are quite different.
(5) Korean
- Like Japanese, Koreans eventually migrated from Hawaii’s plantations to California and
the West Coast in search of better wages and working conditions.
- Because of Japan’s colonization of Korea, there was ample cause for antagonism between
the groups. Yet they also found causes for unity in opposing white racism and the racial
division of labor that relegated Asian workers to the lowest level of work and wages.
(6) South Asian
- Indian Coolies
(7) Filipino
- Philippines became a US territory in 1898. Filipinos were nationals and could move
largely unrestricted into the US despite Asian exclusion laws.
Erika Lee: “Chinese Exclusion Example”
(1) Intro
- Portrayals of Chinese immigration as an evil, “unarmed invasion”.
- The Chinese Exclusion Act on 6 May 1882 prohibited the immigration of Chinese
laborers for a period of ten years and barred all Chinese immigrants form naturalized
citizenship. Demonstrating the class-bias in the law, merchants, teachers, students,
travelers, and diplomats were exempt from exclusion.
- Marks a “watershed” in US history: the first significant restrictive immigration law; the
first to restrict a group of immigrants based on their race and class; helped to shape 20centurty US race-based immigration policy.
- The Chinese exclusion introduced a “gatekeeping” ideology, politics, law, and culture
that transformed the way in which Americans viewed and thought about race,
immigration, and the US's identity as a nation of immigration.
- It legalized and reinforced the need to restrict, exclude, and deport "undesirable" and
excludable immigrants. It established Chinese immigrants categorized by their race, class,
and gender relations as the ultimate category of undesirable immigrants as the models by
which to measure the desirability (and "whiteness") of other immigrant groups.
(2) Gatekeeping
- The metaphor of “gates” and “gatekeepers” to describe the US government’s effort to
control immigration became inscribed in national conversation about immigration during
the twentieth century.
- Racializing Chinese immigrants as permanently alien, threatening, and inferior on the
basis of their race, culture, labor, and aberrant gender relations.
- Containing the danger they represented by limiting economic and geographical mobility
as well as barring them from naturalized citizenship through local, state, and federal laws
and action.
- Protecting the nation from both further immigrant incursions and dangerous immigrants
already in the United States by using the power of the state to legalize the modes and
processes of exclusion, restriction, surveillance, and deportation.
-
Race consistently played a crucial role in distinguishing between "desirable,"
"undesirable," and "excludable" immigrants.
- In doing so, gatekeeping helped to establish a framework for understanding race and
racial categories and reflected, reinforced, and reproduced the existing racial hierarchy in
the country.
- Thus, America's gates have historically been open only to some, while they have
remained closed to others.
- Gatekeeping, a product and result of Chinese exclusion, had and continues to have
profound influence on immigrant groups, twentieth-century immigration patterns,
immigration control, and American national identity.
(3) Race and Racialization
- Chinese exclusion -> other exclusion
- Race intersected with class and gender-based arguments and continued to lay the largest
rile in defining and categorizing which immigrant groups to admit or exclude.
- “Oriental invasion”
- The “threat” of Japanese immigrants: the great success in agriculture and the tendency to
settle and start families in the US.
- Japanese were depicted as “tricky”, “warlike”, “aggressive” and “objectionable.”
(4) Immigration Regulation
- The Chinese Exclusion Act provide the ideological structure to chich other immigrants
groups were compared and racialized.
(5) Conclusion
- The end result was a nation that embraced the notion of guarding America’s gates against
“undesirable” foreigners in order to protect Americans.
Leslie Hatamiya: “Wartime Experience”
(1) Introduction
- Americans of Japanese ancestry during WWII were the result of racialism, war hysteria,
and a failure of the nation’s leadership.
- President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
(2) Wartime Experience
- The story of the Civil Liberties Act does not begin with President Roosevelt’s 1942 order
authorizing the evacuation and internment. The story reflects a longstanding history of
anti-Asian sentiment in the US and the struggle by one minority group, unjustly treated,
to restore faith in the nation’s system of government.
- The Issei and the Nisei: the success in agriculture as fierce competition, and the antiAsian sentiments that terrorized Chinese immigrants now focused on the Japanese.
- From verbal abuse and violence to institutionalized in law.
Kimberle Crenshaw: “Mapping the Margins”
Useful links:
Anti-Japanese exclusion movement | Densho Encyclopedia
The long history of US racism against Asian Americans, from 'yellow peril' to
'model minority' to the 'Chinese virus' (theconversation.com)