Chinese Americans

HISTORY OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

CHINESE AMERICANS AND THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH

CHINESE AMERICANS AND CITIZENSHIP

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chinese Americans can trace their roots to the mid-nineteenth century. Although it is not known when the first Chinese ventured into North America, Harry H. L. Kitano and Roger Daniels (2001) suggest that the first major wave of Chinese immigration to the United States occurred just before the California gold rush of 1849. Although Chinese Americans do not have the long history of African Americans and Latino Americans, they are also not a new immigrant group. Rather, Chinese Americans are a well-established U.S. ethnic group that has faced long-standing social, political, and economic discrimination as well as outright government exclusion (e.g., via immigration laws and policies). Chinese people immigrated to the United States during a variety of periods, and they differed demographically from one another: some were professional elites, while others were cheap labor. Initially most were men.

HISTORY OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

The United States has a long history of immigration and naturalization laws and policies that excluded Chinese from entering the country. In the mid- to late nineteenth century there were no formal policies to prevent immigrants from coming to the United States. As a result Chinese laborers, fleeing from what Sucheng Chan (1991) refers to as a time of natural disasters and extreme political turmoil in China, sought work in the United States, a place that many Chinese believed offered unlimited wealth, resources, and opportunities for success. Unlike other minority groups, such as Africans, who were forced to come to America against their wills, most Chinese immigrants were sojourners who intended to work in the United States for a short time and eventually return to their homes in China. However, similar to other racial minorities in the United States, Chinese workers were relegated to second-class citizenship and often treated as inferior or subhuman compared to whites. Large numbers of Chinese laborers were coerced and even physically forced to work on plantations, in mines, and on the railroads. When their labor was no longer needed, exclusionary immigration laws based on race and nationality were instituted, preventing new Chinese workers from entering the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, prevented Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for ten years and prohibited naturalization. In 1888 the Scott Act barred all Chinese laborers legally residing in America reentry into the United States after visiting China. The Geary Act (1892) extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for another ten years. Chinese laborers were barred from entering the United States indefinitely in 1902. In 1917 the U.S. Congress prohibited the entry of natives from China, South and Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and parts of what is now known as the Middle East.

The anti-immigration movement of the early twentieth century was coupled with violence and racism against all Asian immigrants but in particular the Chinese. The anti-immigrant sentiments prevalent during this time were based on numerous fears, particularly a fear of “for-eignness,” or the idea of difference, usually based on ethnocentric notions of biological and cultural inferiority. White Americans also feared that immigrants would take their jobs, jobs that in many instances were not sought by whites.

In 1943 the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was repealed, and a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants per year was established. The War Brides Act of 1945 allowed veterans of World War II (1939-1945) to bring their foreign-born wives and children to the United States, increasing the number of Chinese women who were allowed to immigrate to the United States. Until then the Page Act of 1875, implemented in an effort to reduce the number of Asian prostitutes in the United States, limited the immigration attempts of most Chinese women. The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 eliminated racial and ethnic restrictions from the country’s immigration and naturalization policies and opened the door for many Chinese women wanting to immigrate to the United States. Likewise the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 removed quotas for immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, resulting in high levels of immigration from China, Japan, and various Southeast Asian countries. The new immigration guidelines allowed 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere to enter the United States, with no more than 20,000 per country, along with 120,000 immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. The law also prioritized reunification of families and made it easier for Chinese immigrants to become naturalized. Additionally children of immigrants were granted citizenship, a privilege that was typically denied in the past.

As a result of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, the rate of immigration to the United States increased, and the nature of immigration changed as more people of color were allowed entry to the United States, creating a substantial shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the population. The number of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans in the United States increased from around 125,000 in the early 1900s to well over 1.6 million by 1990.

CHINESE AMERICANS AND THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH

Some researchers argue that American-born Chinese began to outnumber immigrants from China residing in the United States starting in the 1940s, and that trend has continued into the twenty-first century. Chinese Americans are not a monolithic group but rather a diverse population. Some have enjoyed the economic success that comes with higher education and a professional career, but many Chinese Americans are low-skilled laborers with little education and low socioeconomic status. Stereotypes of Chinese Americans often misrepresent their experiences, and according to Frank Wu (2002), racial prejudice and discrimination directed at Chinese Americans often result from such stereotypes. For example, the model minority myth, which arose in the mid-1960s, holds that the success of Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans, is due to their hard work and diligence, ignoring how race, class, and reasons for migration can influence the experiences of different immigrant groups.

The model minority myth also exacerbates conflict between Asian Americans and other U.S. minority groups by setting Asian Americans on a pedestal as a “model” group that has “made it” because of dedication and a positive work ethic that other minority groups may lack. Furthermore the model minority myth ignores the fact that many Chinese Americans are not highly educated professionals but are low-skilled laborers who do not experience economic success. Thus the model minority myth obscures the contextual situation of each immigrant group. Chinese immigrants who migrated shortly after the Immigration Act of 1965, for example, were predominantly educated professionals, giving them and their children an economic advantage that many earlier Chinese immigrants lacked.

The model minority myth deflects attention from racist structural factors that have impeded the success of many immigrants and people of color in the United States. It promotes the ideology of individuality as a way to achieve success in America and ignores the barriers (such as racist immigration laws and policies) facing many immigrant groups and their children in achieving success.

CHINESE AMERICANS AND CITIZENSHIP

Although Chinese Americans have fared better in the United States than some other Asian groups (e.g., Filipinos, Vietnamese, Hmong), they have been far from immune to the effects of racism. Numerous studies have documented incidents of overt racism experienced by Chinese Americans, ranging from verbal insults and differential treatment to hate crimes and violence. The murder of Vincent Chin, a young Chinese American man, exemplifies the type of racially motivated violence that Asian Americans may experience. Chin was severely beaten on June 19, 1982, outside a bar in Detroit. He died four days later, five days before his wedding. The perpetrators, two out-of-work autoworkers, claimed they had mistaken Chin for Japanese, a group they blamed for problems within Detroit’s automobile industry.

Chinese Americans have also had their citizenship questioned. Citizenship was once legally denied to both Chinese immigrants and their American-born descendants because of their race. In the early twenty-first century, although Chinese Americans are legal citizens, they are often not culturally viewed as citizens because they are not white. Scholars argue that racialized ethnics, such as Chinese Americans, are often assumed to be foreign rather than American. Mia Tuan’s 1998 study of the Asian Americans’ experience revealed that many Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans, are often asked where they are from. When “America” is the response, most whites, unsatisfied that Asians can be Americans, will continue by asking, “no, where are you really from.” Thus as Frank Wu (2002) pointed out, Asian Americans are seen as “perpetual foreigners” in the United States. The perpetual foreigner syndrome was evident in some media coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympics. During the figure skating competition, Michelle Kwan, a Chinese American skater, lost the gold medal to Tara Lipinski, a white American. A subsequent MSNBC headline read, “American Beats Out Kwan,” suggesting that Kwan was not as American as Lipinski. Four years later, in the Seattle Times, a similar headline appeared when Kwan lost to another white American, Sarah Hughes, in the 2002 winter Olympics: “Hughes Good as Gold: American Outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in Skating Surprise.” Both headlines are examples of how a sense of belonging, a privilege associated with citizenship, is denied to Chinese Americans because of their race and how racialized ethnics are not able to fully assimilate into the mainstream.

While Chinese cultural centers and Chinatowns reflect one of the many impacts Chinese Americans have had on American culture, Chinese American laborers represent another major contribution to American culture and history. In 1869 the Union Pacific Railroad and the Eastern Pacific Railroad were joined together by the Transcontinental Railroad, connecting the eastern part of the United States to the western. Chinese laborers provided a substantial number of workers to complete the project and were paid less than their white counterparts. The completion of this railroad aided in the economic development of the western part of the United States. Thus while Chinese American laborers have historically been exploited financially and faced racial discrimination, they were integral in the economic development of the United States through their hard work on the railroads.

Chinese Americans have lived in the United States for more than a century, but their history has been plagued with racism. Racist immigration and naturalization laws and policies excluded Chinese from migrating to the United States and denied them rights and privileges associated with citizenship. Although these laws and policies have been dismantled, Chinese Americans still face stereotypes, such as the model minority myth, that minimize the breadth of their experiences. The history of Chinese immigrants provides a contextual framework with which to understand the situation of Chinese Americans.

SEE ALSO Assimilation; Citizenship; Immigrants, Asian; Immigration; Model Minority; Nativism; Naturalization; Racism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarez, Alvin. Asian Americans and Racism: When Bad Things Happen to “Model Minorities.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology (12) 3: 477-492.

Chan, Sucheng. 1991. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne.

Fong, Timothy. 1994. The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Fong, Timothy, and Larry H. Shinagawa, eds. 2000. Asian Americans: Experiences and Perspectives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Kitano, Harry H. L., and Roger Daniels. 2001. Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Tuan, Mia. 1998. Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites? The Asian Ethnic Experience Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Tuan, Mia. 1999. Neither Real Americans nor Real Asians? Multigeneration Asian Ethnics Navigating the Terrain of Authenticity. Qualitative Sociology (22) 2: 105-125.

Wu, Frank H. 2002. Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books.

Saher Selod

David G. Embrick