In the mid
to late 1800s, there was a large wave of Chinese immigration to the US as a
result of the Gold Rush and the Transcontinental Railroad. However, as the
post-Civil War economy declined, animosity towards the Chinese grew, leading to
multiple pieces of unconstitutional legislation to exclude these Chinese
immigrants. After the Fourteenth Amendment, Asians were the only group
ineligible for citizenship. Finally, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed,
banning all Chinese laborers from immigrating.
This was later extended in 1892
through the Geary Act, an act called “the draconian immigration law ever passed”.
This law, as McClain explains, “required that all Chinese legitimately residing
in the United States obtain … a certificate affirming their right to be in this
country. If a Chinese resident were found without a certificate, he would be
subject to immediate and summary deportation…” (McClain). The Geary Act would
remain in effect for over fifty years. Subsequently, the Immigration Act of
1917 (also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) barred all immigration from
the Asia-Pacific Zone in addition to further restricting immigrants through
literacy tests and including new categories of “excludable classes of
immigrants”.
These laws were ultimately a
reflection of the increasingly hostile public opinion of Asian-Americans. There
are many explanations for this reaction: they worked for less, angering the
unions; they spent little of their money on American goods, angering
nationalists; etc. The clearest reason, though, appears to be how they looked
and acted differently from other Americans. As a San Francisco newspaper
commented, the typical Chinese immigrant “knows and cares nothing more of the
laws and language of the people among whom he lives than will suffice to keep
him out of trouble” (McClain). In response to the way Americans felt, the
Exclusion Act and Geary Act cemented Asian-Americans’ status as foreigners,
taking away citizenship. New immigration laws restricted Chinese women, causing
one Chinese man to suggest “they passed this law to make us die out altogether”
(Chang).
To enforce
these new laws, the government set up the Angel Island facility, a special
immigration station, in 1910. While this may have been, in some ways, better
than the two-story shed where up to five hundred Chinese ship passengers were
crammed, the facility was constructed to be inescapable and isolated from other
Chinese. As Chang describes, “the detainees were treated like animals or
commodities, forced to live in squalid cramped quarters”, creating “a sense of
alienation and powerlessness not only in the detainees, but also in those Chinese
already in the United States” (Chang). Many detainees, feeling hopelessly
trapped, wrote poems on the walls in the facility. These poems detailed the psychological
effect that the Angel Island facility and these exclusion policies had on the
Chinese American community:
Curled up in an enclosure,
my movements are dictated by others.
Enduring a hundred humiliations,
I can only cry in vain.
This person's tears fall,
but what can the blue heavens do?
I am distressed that we Chinese are
in this wooden building
It is actually racial barriers which
cause
difficulties on Yingtai Island.
Even while they are tyrannical they
still
claim to be humanitarian.
I should regret my taking the risks
of
coming in the first place.
America has power, but not justice.
In prison, we were victimized as if
we were guilty.
Given no opportunity to explain, it
was really brutal.
I bow my head in reflection but there
is
nothing I can do.
The position
of immigrants points to the roots of the modernist movement. As people are traveling
from one place to another, then are stuck in one place for a long time, the idea
of mobility, both physical and social, plays a significant role. The detainees
found themselves confined to the terrible conditions of the inescapable Angel
Island, but found a way to escape through their writing. Poetry allowed them to
express their voices even when cut off from the rest of the world.
Chang, Robert S. "Toward an
Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race Theory, Post-Structuralism, and
Narrative Space" California Law
Review 81.5 (1993): 1241-323. Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository. Web.
McClain, Charles J., Jr. "The
Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in Nineteenth Century America: The First
Phase, 1850-1870." California Law
Review 72.4 (1984): 529-68. Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository. Web.
McClain, Charles J., and McClain,
Laurene W., “The Chinese Contribution to the Development of American Law”, Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese
Community in America, 1882-1943 (Sucheng Chan ed., 1991)
Poems:
Lai, Him Mark, Lim, Genny and Yung,
Judy. Island Poetry and History of
Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1991.
Video:
Discovering Angel Island: The Story
Behind the Poems.
KQED, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_EQY-0ThOM
Hi Simon,
ReplyDeleteThis post was excellent and really informative concerning the Chinese exclusion act and to what extent Chinese immigrants faced racial discrimination. Moreover, this post is a good example of how there used to be society's tendency of isolating immigrants due to different cultural practices ,that were not accepted by society, and there were societal expectations that immigrants had to adopt the mainstream American culture. Such could possibly be because new cultures and new practices could have been seen as a threat to mainstream American culture and due to economic disparities during this era, immigrants could have been isolated more and more discriminated again. Moreover, this post can be related back to "The 42nd Parallel" where John Dos Pasos, where Chinese immigrants are only subtly mentioned and not really included in the novel and hence isolated from the novel, representing the social isolation they also faced in reality. Also, I never was aware that poems were written by Chinese immigrants who were at Angel Island and I rarely have ever read or seen a mentioning of such poems in my history classes, so I was glad you mentioned this because the poems truly portray the psychological effects, as you mentioned, and isolation that the Chinese faced. Overall, your post was great and definitely interesting.
Hi Simon,
ReplyDeleteI found your post not only insightful but also informative, I was not previously aware of the many acts, laws and legal actions geared specifically against Chinese immigrants to the United States. I am curious if after your research, you feel that the impact on Chinese immigrants' psyche remains even to this day? Or does the same sort of issue manifest itself in other groups of people who are outsiders? Certainly this country, if anything, is still tackling the issue of immigration and resentment toward immigrants who come to this country. In this manner, it seems that the pain and the suffering discussed in the poem you elected to put in your post still remains incredibly relevant to this day. It also can certainly be brought back to "The 42nd Parallel" in that the poem is reflects the voice of the outsiders, the Chinese American community who at this time of history, were outsiders in much the same ways as we see groups, like the "colored", being outsiders in Dos Passos novel. We see these same issues in the poem, the novel and even in today's life.
I really enjoyed your post. It is important to understand what different communinties of people went through. As we've been reading, so many voices are not accounted for or represented. Thank you for this!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. It is important to understand what different communinties of people went through. As we've been reading, so many voices are not accounted for or represented. Thank you for this!
ReplyDeleteThe situation on Angel Island reminds me of the Stanford prison experiment where random people were labeled as either jail keepers or as inmates and brutal conditions resulted. It is interesting how our opinions about people can become so harsh as a result of what we are told about social status.
ReplyDeleteThe situation on Angel Island reminds me of the Stanford prison experiment where random people were labeled as either jail keepers or as inmates and brutal conditions resulted. It is interesting how our opinions about people can become so harsh as a result of what we are told about social status.
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting how many Chinese immigrated to America to find new opportunities, but ended up stuck on Angel Island. I liked how you pointed out that even though they could not physically escape from Angel Island, they could escape mentally by expressing their emotions through poetry. I also thought it was ironic how they would write poems on the walls of the facility - the walls that kept them trapped.
ReplyDeleteI think that this situation is still present within immigration policy even today, especially with all the hostility that is being shown to certain immigrants for this country. Although it may not be explicitly xenophobic most of the time, there definitely are still some underlying tensions regarding this subject within the US.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting how the idea of the 'other' has been omnipresent in America. Perhaps the American identity is shaped off of a contrast with an 'other' group. However, it is often the voices of this group that are the most powerful, as you pointed out. Great work: your post was very well done.
ReplyDeleteThe anecdote that mentioned Angel Island was interesting but also enlightening as it went into detail about Asian American exclusion at the time - and the Geary Act perhaps was the founding principle for much of the other sorts of foreign vs us based thinking prevalent in the U.S at the time.
ReplyDeleteI would like to know any examples of the poetry mentioned - haven't heard that being used before.
I appreciate the opportunity to learn a little bit about this piece of national and local history. It is tragically sad that discrimination on this level was taking place at all, but it is especially poignant to imagine this occurring in our own backyard. As it pertains to our readings, I'm still waiting for the racist overtones to be rectified and flagged as unacceptable by these modernist artists. However, I'm beginning to wonder if they won't be, and intentionally so, because as we learn more about the modernist era, race and discrimination were a key component of the idea of the crowd and the changing society. Perhaps the crowds fear of a rapidly changing and uncontrollable environment manifested itself, in part, in a fear for the "other" as my peers have already mentioned. Change often feels foreign and it is all to easy to point fingers at the "other" (i.e. foreigners) to blame for a collective sense of insecurity.
ReplyDeleteThis really interesting because the US xenophobic attitude towards immigrants seems to have impacted almost all the ethnic groups that immigrated to the US. IF we look back all the way towards early US to 19th, harsh attitudes towards European immigrants were common. But after European began to continually integrate into US culture that attitude seemed to have died down and then transferred into new immigrant groups which in this post indicates were Asian immigrants.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you focused not on the confinement of the Chinese on Angel Island as a stagnation of their creativity and voice, but rather the spark towards a new kind of expression. I feel like analyzing their stories from this point of view helps us understand the realities of their situation without having to analyze it from sources gathered from afar. I do agree with you that the idea of mobility becomes very prominent once it is taken away.
ReplyDeleteSo far in class discussion we have talked about the voice of the "other", especially immigrants. We have also specifically talked about black voice and the representation of the other in general, but we haven't really looked closely into how various immigrant groups experienced discrimination differently. That's why I found this post to be interesting and important, because it is the experience of a specific ethnic group. I think it would be interesting to notice and analyze if there is a differentiation in representation of immigrant and racial groups in The 42nd Parallel. And if there isn't such a clear differentiation, is this done intentionally by Dos Passos and why?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting how xenophobia played into the politics, policies, culture and even art during this era. The poem is a great reflection of being let down after looking forward to the American Dream but also a reflection of being thought of as the other.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you wrote about this minority group in America at this time because so far in class we've only discussed the struggle of the minority groups portrayed by Dos Passos (who focuses mainly on African Americans or immigrants). It is true poetry is often used to express oneself/a group of peoples' concerns, and this poem seems quite dark and desolate, reflecting the author's emotional surrender.
ReplyDeleteYou raise an very interesting point regarding the relationship between artistic expression and sociopolitical oppression, specifically in the context of immigration. In the face of confinement and oppression, poetry was used as a means of escape, and expression proved to be an outlet that was accessible to every human regardless of racism, xenophobic conditions, and physical detainment. You illustrate this seamlessly, revealing the psychological element present in modernist artwork through Chinese American poetry, and connecting it to the social, political, and cultural movements of the early 19th century. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how in this race issue, there is more an emphasis to further alienate women more over men. According to the post, as a joke or possible theory, a Chinese man of the time said, “they passed this law to make us die out altogether." However, the US while discriminating against the Chinese, discriminated more against Chinese women, because possibly they found undesirable Chinese men still more useful than Chinese women.
ReplyDeleteHey Simon,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the focus on the non-elite artists of the Modernist era. As of now, the class has not talked about other colored writers (though it probably will soon). Your post helps show the voices of those who were never elite or "cultured" enough to gain recognition in their own time for their own hardships and art. The Chinese immigrant detainees experienced everything that spurred the modernist experience, you mentioned isolation and moving around to be specific; but we don't focus on them because they didn't have a byword to rally behind, I find that sad. I think Vanness Zhu put up a post about the Precisionists who were not called by that title until MoMA called them such. Like these Chinese, they too were ignored because they weren't elite, they didn't have a unified purpose nor theme nor some other kind of solidarity. I wonder how many individual voices have we lost in the deluge of the elite, unified voices.