The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.
Cpl. George Bushy, left, holds the youngest child of Shigeho Kitamoto, center, as she and her children are forced to leave Bainbridge Island, Wash., in 1942. They were sent to an internment camp.
People of Asian descent have been living in the United States for more than 160 years, and have long been the target of bigotry. Here is a look at the violence and racism that Asian immigrants and Asian Americans have faced since before the Civil War.
People v. Hall
Chinese immigrants began coming to the United States in significant numbers in the 1850s, largely to California and other Western states, to work in mining and railroad construction. There was high demand for these dangerous, low-wage jobs, and Chinese immigrants were willing to fill them. Almost immediately, the racist trope of “Asians coming to steal White jobs” was born. And
in 1854, the California Supreme Court reinforced racism against Asian immigrants in People v. Hall, ruling that people of Asian descent could not testify against a White person in court, virtually guaranteeing that Whites could escape punishment for anti-Asian violence. In this case, it was murder:
George Hall shot and killed Chinese immigrant Ling Sing, and the
testimony of witnesses was rejected because they were also Asian.
Chinese massacre of 1871
On Oct. 24, 1871,
following the murder of a White man caught in the crossfire between rival Chinese groups,
more than 500 White and Hispanic rioters surrounded and attacked Los Angeles’ small Chinese community, centered in a red-light district known as Negro Alley.
At least 17 Chinese men and boys were lynched, including a prominent local doctor. They were
hanged across several downtown sites, anywhere the rioters could find a beam to string a noose. Eight of the rioters were eventually convicted of manslaughter, but their convictions were overturned.
No one else was ever punished.
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
In the 1870s spawned another spike in anti-Asian racism and scapegoating.
In 1882, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which
banned Chinese immigration for 20 years. President Chester A. Arthur vetoed it, but then signed another version with a 10-year ban. The first law placing a restriction on immigration to the United States, it was
extended for more than 60 years before it was repealed in 1943.
An 1885 print depicts Chinese immigrant miners working for the Union Pacific Coal Company fleeing from armed White miners who blamed the Chinese miners for taking their jobs.
Rock Springs massacre, 1885
In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, long-standing aggression against Chinese miners exploded
in September 1885, when
100 to 150 vigilantes surrounded and attacked Chinese mineworkers, killing 28 people and burning 79 homes. Hundreds fled to a nearby town, then were tricked into boarding a train they were told would take them to safety in San Francisco. Instead, it took them back to Rock Springs, where they were forced back into the mine. Federal troops stayed for 13 years to impose order.
San Francisco plague outbreak
In 1900, an outbreak of bubonic plague struck San Francisco. It is likely that the
outbreak began with a ship from Australia,
but since the first stateside victim was a Chinese immigrant, the whole community was blamed for it. Overnight, the city’s Chinatown was surrounded by police, preventing anyone but White residents from going in or out.
Chinese residents were also subjected to home searches and property destruction by force. The episode was a prelude to the racism that has been aimed at Asian Americans during the
coronavirus pandemic, which former President Donald Trump frequently called “the China virus," “the Wuhan virus,” and the “Kung Flu.
The 1943 film "Japanese Relocation" tried to justify the government's decision to move people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to internment camps.
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, the
U.S. government forced all of them into internment camps for the duration of the war over suspicions they might aid the enemy. Conditions in the camps were extreme, blazing hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.
No spies were ever found. When they were freed, many returned to find their homes and businesses vandalized or confiscated.
Vietnamese shrimpers and the KKK
At the close of the Vietnam War, the United States resettled many Vietnamese fleeing the communists. In Texas, many of those immigrants took up shrimping. “We like the weather, we like the shrimping, we like a chance to start our own businesses,” Nguyen Van Nam told The Washington Post in 1984. As they worked hard and began to dominate the industry, the trope of Asians coming to take White jobs returned, and this time it was wearing a white hood. Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam trained his members in
commando-style attacks; they patrolled the waters in their regalia and set boats owned by Vietnamese people on fire.
Lily Chin holds a photograph of her son Vincent, 27, who was beaten to death in June 1982.
The murder of Vincent Chin
Vincent Chin was out on the town.
On June 19, 1982, the 27-year-old Chinese American was about to marry and was celebrating with friends in Detroit. Then
two White men picked a bar fight, blaming Chin for “the Japanese” taking their auto-industry jobs. Outside the bar,
the men beat Chin with a baseball bat. He died several days later. His assailants took a manslaughter plea bargain, which carried a possible sentence of 15 years. Instead,
the judge gave the men probation and a $3,000 fine. The lenient sentence outraged and galvanized the Asian American community, helping to unite them across ethnic lines and work for civil rights.
The L.A. riots
Tensions had been building between the Black and Korean American communities in Los Angeles for years. Then came the April 29, 1992, acquittal of the police officers caught on camera beating Rodney King. As the city erupted in riots, Korean American businesses became targets; thousands were damaged during the unrest.
‘Burn, baby, burn’: What I saw as a black journalist covering the L.A. riots 25 years ago
9/11-inspired hatred
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hate crimes spiked against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim, including people of South Asian descent. Only
four days after the attacks, aircraft mechanic Frank Silva Roque murdered Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh American gas station owner originally from India, whom Roque mistook for Muslim. The post-9/11 period led to greater awareness and advocacy between the South and East Asian communities.
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Why is racism still such a problem for the most powerful (weaponised) country on earth?
You'd think a Civil War might have been the last word on the issue. The slave holding states of the Old South did battle with the northern states in 1861, fighting for the right to extend slavery into the vast lands of the West as America grew. The South lost and President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.
But the South was never admonished for having slaves in the first place. History quickly rewrote the Civil War as a "quarrel between brothers".
For the North, what was vital was re-admitting the old Confederacy back into the bosom of the family. Racist views and bigotry - no problem, just don't disturb the Union.
There was no attempt to change the hearts of Southern racists. In fact, as long as the Union remained intact, racists could act as they pleased. They could lynch, and loot and burn. They could murder and rape. They could threaten and intimidate. They could bully.
Hence
the rise of segregation, the intimidation of black voters, indeed the denial of the right to vote for black people. And through it all, the mindset was left untroubled - the notion that white might is right, and black people should be treated as second-class citizens.
Of course,
that mindset was embedded deep in many of the nation's police forces, which grew out of groups set up to catch runaway blacks slaves as well as maintain law and order.
It's
the mindset that led President Woodrow Wilson, in office from 1913 to 1921, to oversee the re-segregation of multiple federal agencies. This is
the same president who publicly backed the Ku Klux Klan. It's the mindset that at the turn of the 20th Century saw the vilification of black people as wide-eyed "happy negroes" content with their lot as poor share croppers and shoe shiners.
It's
the mindset that saw the erection of hundreds of Confederate statues of Southern civil war leaders, that are now the subject of controversy today. Men venerated as patriots, when they fought a war to break up the Union - men who should have been treated as traitors, not heroes.
Ah, I hear you cry. All that is ancient history, things have changed.
It is easy for white Americans to compartmentalise the past. To see the injustices of yesteryear as having no relevance to events today. African Americans don't have that luxury. The past is the present, the racism is the same.
I know this because having reported from America for nearly a quarter of a century, I'm seeing the same stories of police brutality, discrimination in housing and jobs, and black voter suppression, as I saw back in Los Angeles in the 1990s.
Suspicious deaths in police custody followed by rudimentary inquiries, followed usually by the exoneration of the officers involved. It's a pathetic cycle of indulgence that allows, even condones and encourages, bad behaviour.
There's another example of the past being the present.
I've already mentioned my first US presidential election in 1996. It was a blowout for Bill Clinton against a hapless Bob Dole for the Republicans.
A big issue in the campaign was urban crime and the Clinton administration's controversial 1994 Crime Bill that critics say increased mass incarceration and led to the disproportionate jailing of tens of thousands of black men. Joe Biden helped get that legislation on the books, and his involvement has come back to haunt him.
The stories of police brutality against African Americans are similar to those of 20 years ago, writes the BBC's Clive Myrie.
www.bbc.com