The Making of Asian America: A History

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction, Part 1, Chapters 1-2

Part 2, Chapters 3-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-9

Part 3, Chapters 10-12

Part 4, Chapters 13-14

Part 4, Chapters 15-16

Part 5, Chapter 17-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2, Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The Making of Asian America During the Age of Mass Migration and Asian Exclusion”

Chapter 3 Summary: “Chinese Immigrants in Search of Gold Mountain”

The California Gold Rush began in 1848 with the discovery of gold along the American River. In the next few years, more and more Chinese men traveled to California. Most found no gold but pursued other economic opportunities. Political instability at home, from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Chinese Revolution, also led to immigration. By 1870, 63,000 Chinese resided in the US, including the author’s maternal great-great-great-grandfather Moy Dong Kee. With the men in the family traveling back and forth between China and the US, the author’s grandmother eventually came to the US to settle, “finally becoming Chinese American” (62).

As the US Empire expanded westward, “[i]ndustrialization and the growth of American capitalism created an insatiable desire for labor,” including using Chinese workers where they were indispensable in factories, railroads, and in the fields (65). Gold Mountain firms “moved people, information, money, and goods from China to locations around the world” (66). By 1867, 90% of the railroad workforce was Chinese. In 1882, the US passed Chinese Exclusion laws with merchants, students, teachers, and diplomats being exempt. Chinese Americans, who were citizens, were allowed to apply for readmission from China.

Chinese immigration revealed not only race-based inequalities but also questions of sex-based inequality. For example, married women stayed back, taking care of the family and even the husband’s parents. In other cases, women did not usually have exempt professions from the 1882 law. By 1900, only 0.7% of total Chinese immigration was women. Some women immigrants ended up as sex workers. Hawaii was one exception, with a larger percentage of Chinese women. Overall, anti-Chinese immigration laws “slowed the growth of Chinese American families” (81).

By 1900, the Chinese moved all throughout the United States. Some of them became laundrymen, while others opened Chinese restaurants. They took up these professions because racial discrimination pushed them into self-employment. Laundry and restaurants did not require “professional skills, proficiency in English, or education,” and they could be run by families or individuals (76). The Chinese community in the US formed fongs, family associations, tongs, fraternal organizations, and huigans, regional groups, to support each other. Chinese YMCA and YWCA “offered opportunities to learn music, play basketball, take classes in English, Mandarin,” and other areas (82).

From clothing to social customs, Chinese immigrants adapted to their new environment. Second-generation Chinese found “new ways of becoming American” but discrimination often dashed their aspirations (82). Chinese American Wong Kim Ark changed citizenship laws through the United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) Supreme Court Case which affirmed his birthright citizenship. However, in 1924, the Immigration Act “explicitly excluded ‘aliens ineligible to citizenship’,” that is, Asians (87). Two years prior, the “Cable Act revoked the citizenship of women who married ‘aliens ineligible for citizenship’” (87).

Chapter 4 Summary: “’The Chinese Must Go!’: The Anti-Chinese Movement”

Legal Chinese Exclusion began with the 1882 bill by Senator John F. Miller of California. The bill passed even though the Chinese were only a fraction of the immigrant population in the late 19th century, as “their presence in the United States sparked some of the most violent and destructive racist campaigns in US history” (89). Not only did it create race-based debates, but American regulation also shaped international migration. Some feared Chinese economic competition. Others “framed the problem explicitly around the sexual danger that both Chinese women and men allegedly posed” (90). For example, Chinese men who worked as cleaners did “women’s work,” undermining gender roles (91).

Anti-Chinese political and media discourse sometimes led to violence. For example, 17 Chinese were lynched in Los Angeles in 1871 after a Chinese suspect shot a police officer. The incident turned into mob violence, becoming “the largest mass lynching in US history” (93). Racially-motivated violence grew even worse in the 1880s. The 1892 Geary Act extended exclusion laws for another decade, requiring Chinese to register with the federal government. The Chinese themselves called the legal framework a “hundred kinds of oppressive laws” (95).

The total number of Chinese arrivals in the US between 1882 and 1943 was 300,000. They included citizens, returning legal residents, and exempt categories like merchants, “The most common strategy that immigrants used was to falsely claim membership in one of the classes exempt from exclusion laws” helped by the “paper sons” false documents business (95). Many arrived at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco.

However, the vetting process was equally rigorous, including extensive documentation of business activities, partners, and merchandise. The Chinese considered the medical examination upon arrival to be “extremely humiliating” (96). Interrogations lasted for two or three days, but some Chinese immigrants were detained in austere barracks at Angel Island for days, weeks, and even months in contrast to their European counterparts on Ellis Island: “Their average stay was for two weeks, the longest of all the immigrant groups” (98).

Overall, “[t]he Chinese exclusion era coincided with the birth of the US as an empire” such as the Chinese immigration to Hawaii, which the US annexed (100). Native Hawaiians, conquered by the US, also feared the Chinese as a contributor to their dispossession in the context of US imperialism. The circumstances gave birth to the anti-Chinese movement in Hawaii or disenfranchisement, such as the 1887 Bayonet Constitution that only allowed Hawaiian, American, or European male votes.

In the Philippines, annexed after the Spanish-American War (1898), “US military and diplomatic officials promoted Chinese exclusion as an integral part of US colonization of the islands” (102). American Asian Exclusion laws inspired other countries such as Canada. The worst anti-Chinese sentiment was found on the west coast in British Columbia, “a white man’s province” (102). The government did not enact restriction laws, such as a large head tax, until the Chinese laborers helped finish building the Pacific Railway. Then, the 1923 Exclusion Act banned Chinese from entering Canada.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Chapters 3 and 4 offer both chronological and thematic understanding of the Asian immigrant experience in the Americas. The author classifies the period between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries as one of mass migration and legal exclusion. Lee situates the general conditions that led to migration from Asia in capitalism and the Industrial Revolution that required additional labor to expand. She also credits the volatile socioeconomic circumstances in the countries of origin—due, in part, to European imperialism. This section includes the three major themes in this book, The Impact of Immigration Law on Asian Americans, Asian Immigration in the Framework of Race, Gender, and Class, and Empire, Colonialism, and Asian Immigration.

First, the Asian Exclusion laws were a response to Chinese labor immigration, starting in the Gold Rush period. Despite comprising less than 5% of total immigration prior to 1880, Chinese laborers were banned from entering the US. Statistics confirm that such decisions were made primarily on racial grounds rather than to protect the rights of domestic laborers. Some of the worst racial violence in American history, such as the Los Angeles group lynching that Lee describes, also displays the type of prejudicial, nativist attitudes that created the atmosphere for Asian Exclusion in the first place.

US Chinese exclusion laws had three major consequences. First, they led to the creation of elaborate international networks for undocumented migration into the Americas. Second, they set the precedent for similar exclusion laws in other countries, especially Canada. Third, there was a practical and symbolic difference between Ellis and Angel Islands on the East and West Coast, respectively. The former was a symbol of humanitarianism and opportunities for European immigrants in the US. The latter became a symbol of detention linked to exclusion laws.

Second, the intersectionality of race, sex/gender, and class manifests in this section in different ways. Most Asian working-class immigrants were men. The small percentage of women who did immigrate were in an even more detrimental position. Chinese women’s status in the US depended on that of their husbands or male caregivers. Some women were even pushed into the sex trade industry to survive. Asian exclusion and predominantly male immigration slowed family growth in immigrant communities. Chinese men were also pushed into self-employment, at times doing “women’s work,” such as cleaning. This challenge to traditional gender norms also affected them negatively.

Third, American imperialism shaped Asian immigration, starting in the late 19th century. At that time, the US acquired Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and, for a time, occupied Cuba. It also annexed Hawaii. This annexation meant that Chinese Exclusion also impacted the area to “prevent the islands ‘from being submerged and overrun by Asiatics’” (102). When the US occupied Cuba in 1899-1902 and again in 1906-1909, Chinese exclusion also impacted the island. In turn, the US purchase of the Philippines from Spain first led to a bloody colonial war and then to a policy of “benevolent assimilation” of the Filipinos (102). The Filipinos’ status was at worst one of “savages;” at best they were perceived as children in need of tutelage. Overall, imperialism informed every aspect of Asian American lives.