Asian American History

Professor Soniya MunshiSpring 2015

Schedule for Today, 2/26/15

• Orientalism

• Chinese Exclusion Act

• Constructions of Race through the Law– Citizenship Cases

Chinese Exclusion

Yellow Peril in the American Imagination

Chinese Exclusion Act

• Page Law (1875): first federal law that regulated immigration (and as a consequence, excluded Chinese immigrants)

• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): “watershed moment” as it is it the first time that a group is restricted based on race, nationality and class sets precedent for immigration policy

History of Chinese Migration

• Chinese male laborers migrated to West Coast post-Gold Rush (1848)

• Small numbers (1870-1880, only 4.3 percent of immigrants entering the U.S.)

• 1870s: increased numbers of immigrants, economic changes, population growth increased anti-Chinese sentiment

Chinese Exclusion

• Targets of racial discrimination, hostility, violence, based in Orientalist ideas (East:West)

• Different arguments, mostly from labor orgs, like American Federation of Labor – Chinese were migrating as “coolies,” slave-like

conditions which degraded U.S. labor– Lower standard of living (“rice and rats”)

Chinese Exclusion: Gender and Sexuality

• “Meat vs. Rice: American Manhood vs. Asiatic Coolieism” – – Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor

Chinese Exclusion:Gender and Sexuality

• Migration of Chinese prostitutes (1870s) created idea of Asian women as “sexualized danger”– Power to disrupt domestic ideal, relationships

between white men and white women

Chinese Exclusion: Gender and the Role of Manhood

• Claims that Chinese men exploited women, immigrated alone, refused to start families

• Excluded from traditional male labor, created economic niche via laundries, food, domestic service

• Appearance/Aesthetics– loose garments, ambiguous; did not follow strict rules re: gender

Chinese Exclusion: Comparisons

• To show racial threat, comparisons between Chinese and African Americans was common

– “bought” Chinese prostitute, “enslaved” Chinese coolie and African American slaves were conflated

– Similar descriptions (inferior, savage, lustful)

– Chinese seen as more of a threat, as they were less able to assimilate (back to Orientalism)

Chinese Exclusion, based on racial difference

• Duty of the U.S. to exclude racial threat• Clement, San Francisco lawyer (1876)– “Have we any right to close our doors against one

nation and open them to another? Has the Caucasian race any better right to occupy this country than the Mongolian?...We have a great right to say to the half-civilized subject from Asia, “You shall not come at all.”

Chinese Exclusion Act

• Law is passed in 1882• Sets up a precedent for other exclusions, of

Chinese immigrants and others – introduces that race-based exclusions are possible

Applications

• Page Law (1875) includes gender regulations which are used for the exclusion of all prostitutes in the Immigration Act of 1903

• Later debates about immigration policy look to “whiteness” or “yellowness” and include references to “closed gates” to protect the U.S. from “unwelcome invasions”

Japanese Migration

• West Coast became nervous about other immigrant groups, like the Japanese, working in agriculture

• Japanese immigrants tended to settle and start families, but same racial language used to identify them and that they were “tricky” and “warlike,” more “aggressive” than the Chinese.

Indian Migration

• Asian Indians were described as the most objectionable- cheap, dirty, and diseased, and “not fit to be a citizen”

Impact on Mexicans

• Mexicans categorized as “foreign” even on their own (former) land

• Chinese framework of racial inferiority and inability to assimilate is then used to exclude Mexicans as well. – “to Mexicanize Texas or to Orientalize California is

a crime.”

20th Century Immigration Policy

• Immigration Act of 1917: added a literacy test and denied entry to people coming from the “Asiatic Barred Zone” (India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Polynesia, parts of Russia)

• Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924: exclusion of all Asians except Filipinos, and most of SE Europe– In 1934, Filipinos also excluded and along with

Mexicans, were targeted for deportation

Chinese Exclusion as a Failure

• Successful in encouraging migrants to leave and also discouraging migration in the first place

• But, migration did continue via legal loopholes, small changes, and lenient officials at ports of entry

Brief Timeline

• Chinese Exclusion Act extended in 1904

• Asiatic Barred Zone created in 1917– Senate passed a bill to exclude all members of the “African or black race,”

but defeated in House after intensive lobbying by NAACP.

• National Origin Act passed in 1924, barring immigration to all who were not in western or northern Europe

• Chinese Exclusion Act repealed in 1943

• Racial restrictions on immigration repealed in 1965

Citizenship

• Review:

How do you become a citizen of the United States?

Citizenship and Race

1790 Naturalization limited to “white persons”

1952 Racial prerequisite to citizenship ended

In the interim, immigrants needed to argue their racial identity to become citizens of the U.S. : between 1878-1952, 52“prerequisite cases”

reported

How did courts justify decisions about race?

Courts justified decisions by:

1. referring to common or popular beliefs about race

2. referring to “scientific evidence”

First Pre-requisite Case

In re: Ah Yup (1878), federal district court in CA denied citizenship to Chinese applicant because:1. “the words “white person” in this country, at

least, have undoubtedly acquired a well settled meaning in common popular

speech… as well as in common parlance.”

First Pre-requisite Case

In re: Ah Yup (1878), federal district court in CA denied citizenship to Chinese applicant because:

2. “In speaking of the various classifications of races… the common classification is that of Blumenbach, who makes five. 1. The Caucasian, or white race, to which belong the greater part of European nations and those of Western Asia; 2. The Mongolian,

or yellow race, occupying Tartary, China, Japan, etc.; The Ethiopian or Negro (black) race, occupying all of Africa, except the

north; 4. The American, or red race, containing the Indians of North and South America; and 5. The Malay, or Brown race,

occupying the islands of the Indian Archipelago…”

First Pre-requisite Case

In re: Ah Yup (1878), federal district court in CA denied citizenship to Chinese applicant because:

2. “ [N]o one includes the white, or Caucasian, with the Mongolian or yellow race.”

First Pre-requisite Case

In Ah Yup’s case, courts used both rationales:1. According to common sense or popular ideas

about race, Ah Yup was not white.

2. According to science, Ah Yup was Mongolian yellow so he could not be Caucasian/white.

First Pre-requisite Case

• This case is unusual for relying on both types of rationales; later cases usually rely on one or the other.

• Both rationales rely on an assumption that there are natural physical differences that divide humans into different races.

Close Look at Prerequisite Cases

• Ozawa v. United States• United States v. Thind

What happened in these cases? What was the petitioner arguing?

How did the court respond?

Ozawa v. United States

Argument:

Court Response:

Ozawa v. United States

United States v. Thind

Argument:

Court Response:

United States v. Thind

Pre-requisite Case Logics

Why did these cases depend on convincing the courts that the petitioner was White (when

post-1870, Black people were also eligible for citizenship?)

AND, given that many groups, including the Chinese, were characterized as black?

Pre-requisite Case Logics

1. 1870 act referred to people of “African nativity or African descent” not “black” people

2. Legal definition of black was more established

3. Social stigma and racial discrimination led whiteness to be seen as more valuable

Homework

March 12:

Reading Worksheet #4Read Chapter 5, Bengali Harlem by Vivek Bald