The Asian American Experience
RACE: BEYOND THE WHITE, BLACK, LATINO
CONVERSATION
PREPARED BY: MELISSA HORR,
GREATER BOSTON CHINESE COMMUNITY
SERVICES
JUNE 2010
INFORMATION FROM: ASIAN AMERICAN
HISTORY COURSE, POINT LOMA NAZARENE
UNIVERSITY SPRING 2009 W/ PROFESSOR
JAEYOON KIM, PH.D.
Angel Island: The Ellis Island of the West
In 1905, construction of an Immigration Station began in the area known as China
Cove. Surrounded by public controversy from its inception, the station was finally
put into operation in 1910. Although it was billed as the "Ellis Island of the West",
within the Immigration Service it was known as "The Guardian of the Western
Gate" and was designed control the flow of Chinese into the country, who were
officially not welcome with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Sojourners or Immigrants?
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“working away from home”
45% settle in America, 5% of American
population
America = working place, not settling place
for some
55% who returned to their country
NOTE: same ratio of Europeans settled:
returned home
Came for manual labor and good wages
1849 - California Gold Mountain (Gam Saan)
• Many of the Chinese
came to San Francisco
for Gold, but by then
many of the gold was
gone. So a lot of men
had to open service
jobs around the area
to support themselves.
This included cooking,
cleaning, laundry, etc.
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
 African-Americans were a closed slave market in
1833, no more cheap labor
 Asian-Americans accepted low wage
 Lowered wage for Caucasian workers and causes
Caucasian-Asian racial tensions which led to the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
 Only act targeted at a specific race
Flyer for Neighborhood Meeting
on the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1892
when the act was termed to expire.
Asians in Hawaii – Plantations
1800’s – early 1900’s
 Paternalism – business owners start to realize they
need to treat workers well and encourage them to bring
their families building cottages and churches for them
 Ethnic Consolidation – worked toward a common
language, unique identity as Hawaiian people
 Divide and Control – the plantations provided free
housing but divided up the ethnic groups, reflecting the
different waves of labor recruitment; the segmenting of
housing furthered the efforts of the owners to divide
and control the work force, though the workers
themselves preferred living among their own kind
1863 - The Central Pacific RR Company
 First Transcontinental RR
 Other RR proposals denied
because of (black) slavery
concerns
 California - Utah
 Upon completion – no
Chinese were invited to
celebrate the RR completion
ceremony and not allowed to
ride the RR back to
California; they had to
therefore settle down and
work where they were,
creating Chinese communities
as farm workers
1906 San Francisco Earthquake
 Destroyed Records and created an opportunity for
Chinese to claim that they had been born in America
and thus were U.S. citizens, making them eligible to
bring in relatives from China.
 Many claimed to have more relatives than they
actually did and then sold the additional slots to
those who wanted to immigrate.
 Those who came to the U.S. masquerading as
relatives were called "paper sons“
 Angel Island Detention Center was used to hold
those claiming to be Chinese
1922 - Ozawa v. U.S
 1906 - Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906 which
allowed white persons and persons of African
descent or African nativity to naturalize
 He did not challenge the constitutionality of the
racial restrictions. Instead, he attempted to have the
Japanese classified as "white.“
 Opinion of the court: Justice George Sutherland
found that only Caucasians were white, and therefore
the Japanese, by not being Caucasian, were not white
and instead were members of an "unassimilable
race," lacking provisions in any Naturalization Act.
Japanese-American Internment 1942
 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese residing along the
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Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War
Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on
Pearl Harbor.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the
internment with Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942,
which allowed local military commanders to designate
"military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all
persons may be excluded.“
1943 – Chinese immigrants permitted to become naturalized
U.S. citizens
1944 – Interns eligible for military draft
1998 – Apology and monetary compensation for 2,200
Interns
1970’s and 1980’s - Vietnamese Boat People
 In Vietnam, the new
communist government sent
many people who supported
the old government in the
South to "re-education camps",
and others to "new economic
zones."
 An estimated 1 million people
were imprisoned without
formal charges or trials, where
165,000 people died and
thousands were abused or
tortured.
 Fled and became "boat people."
On the open seas, the boat
people had to confront forces of
nature, and elude pirates.
Chinatowns – Residence, Economy, and Tourism
 Metropolitan Chinatowns – Seattle and New York
(two largest)
 Restaurants, laundries, home and community
 Education and “Model Minority” – Second
generation urged to study hard to achieve equality
because not accepted by American corporations
 Chinatowns re-designed to encourage Tourism
Additional Resources
 GOOGLE AND BING: “Asian American History”
 A-Voyce, Asian Community Development
Corporation Blog and Walking Tour of Chinatown,
http://avoyce.wordpress.com/
 Text Book of Essays: Major Problems in Asian
American History, Edited by Kuashige and Yang
Murray
 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/asian_voices/asia
n_timeline.cfm
 http://www.cetel.org/res.html