California Assemblyman Paul Fong (D – Mountain View) is seeking federal reparations for the discrimination suffered by Chinese immigrants coming to the United States in the 19th and early 20th century.
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Mountain View, wants us to remember that when the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor in 1886, welcoming immigrants from around the world to America, there should have been a sign posted in front that said: “Everyone except Chinese.”
Just four years earlier, at the urging of Californians, Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, for the first time barring entry to a group of immigrants strictly based on their national origin.
“Chinese people were singled out,” he said. “They couldn’t be citizens, they couldn’t hold jobs. They couldn’t own property.”
The law was repealed in 1943, and in most parts of the country it was forgotten. Growing up in the Midwest, I vaguely remember reading in my U.S. history book about “yellow peril” but knew little about the suffering of Chinese immigrants and their families. Of course, that same history book didn’t mention the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, either.
But Fong wants us to remember. And he wants us to apologize.
Fong has it right, this is a chapter in US history that too often gets overlooked. The massive disruptions in the 19th century caused many Chinese to seek their fortunes overseas. Chinese immigrants built railroads, worked on mines, started businesses, and formed communities throughout the world, including in the North American west. They also suffered discrimination, were subjected to violent attacks and lynchings, and faced a number of laws designed to restrict immigration and force Chinese and other Asians into residential and occupational ghettos.
Along with the African slavery, the wars of extermination carried out against the Native Americans, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the treatment of Chinese-Americans during the formative years of the United States needs to be addressed, and I applaud Paul Fong for his efforts.
“Apologies for the past are due Chinese descendants”: California Assemblyman Paul Fong (D – Mo.. http://tinyurl.com/kvbzz8
I with you all the way up to the word ‘reparations’. The idea that such payments can undo the past is laughable.
Interesting. I just attended a presentation on George Mackay, the Calvinist missionary here in Taiwan, who married a local aborigine girl half his age and took her back to Canada, where customs informed him that she would have to pay a head tax, whose purpose was to restrict Chinese immigration. He went ballistic, and became a major and vigorous opponent of the head tax, and organized the Churches to oppose it, the first time Canadian churches had intervened in policy. The effort fell apart when he left, and the Canadians later raised the head tax to $500 from the $50 that Mackay encountered.
The presenter said that the purpose of the head tax was to slow Chinese immigration, not because the Chinese were considered undesirable — the government knew they were good citizens — but because they were afraid that whites might riot against them. A similar rationale was used for the Japanese-American relocation camps (internment was a little different than relocation. Relocation referred to the effort to relocate J-As away from the coasts to camps from which they were free to come and go; internment was imprisonment for non-civilians and both J-As and other Axis nationals were subject to it).
Michael Turton
Actually, FoaRP, it would appear that Fong doesn’t seek monetary reparations.
From the original article:
Maybe its time we take the Chinese approach to things…just pretend that the bad episodes in our history don’t exist, and if the Chinese dare to mention them, come back with, “Oh yeah, what about the Uygurs, Miao and Tibetans?” Huh? Huh???
When I saw that he said “The reparations I’m talking about would be education,” I laughed, thinking of the high-ranking UC administrator who told Ward Connerly,
But I guess he meant educating non-Chinese as well.
For crying out loud, can’t people just get on with their lives? My grandfather was Irish, fought for Britain in WW2, married a Brit, moved to England. When looking for a place to rent routinely came across “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish” signs. Nevertheless he managed to get through his life without banging on endlessly about the potato famine and how the world owed him a favour. For some reason he blamed the people who did him wrong for the wrong doing, not their descendants. All this ever does is encourage identity politics and a victim culture IMHO.
I largely agree with Si, but if someone wants to put up a monument, I certainly wouldn’t be upset.
Victim culture is right. Fong should grow up.
I’m actually a little concerned about the direction of these comments. It’s pretty easy for people in a dominant culture to dismiss the history of oppression as ‘identity politics.’
Frankly, that’s a page from the CCP playbook: Trying to understand the complexities of the Han-Tibetan relationship will lead to ‘divisiveness,’ and ‘upset social harmony,’ etc.
I don’t think calling attention to dark periods in any country’s history creates ‘victims,’ rather it recognizes the sacrifices made in building present day circumstances. That’s a worthwhile goal.
I also don’t think Assemblyman Fong is grandstanding here, I get the sense he earnestly believes that this is an important part of California (and US) history, and it should be remembered as such.
This needs to be acknowledged, rather than telling people to get on with their lives. Telling people to move on and get over it is not correct, should we then tell the Japanese to get over the bomb being dropped or the Chinese forget about Nanjing? I don’t think so. Take a look at Asia Chronicle (www.asiachroniclenews.com) for up to date new on all of Asia.
Agreed. I am just not reading from Fong’s request anything resembling blaming people today. It would appear to me that he is simply asking for official recognition that such policies are wrong. All too often requests for official apologies are misinterpreted as an attempt to elevate a group’s standing through guilt. Reality is, recognition of an egregious error, such as the Exclusion Act, is one of the few ways we teach future generations to not repeat them.
“”All I want is a simple apology for the wrongs that were done to Chinese-Americans in the 18th and 19th century,” [Fong] said.”
The remembering the past is fine. It is the apology I cannot agree with. I do not agree with the idea idea that asking people to apologise is not making people today culpable. If you ask for an apology from someone you are saying it is their fault and they are liable. It is guilt by association. Personally I do not want any apologies for WW2, the potato famine, the Spanish Armada, the Norman invasion, the Viking invasion, the Anglo Saxon invasion or the Roman invasion. It is ridiculous. Nobody is to blame for the actions of their ancestors. I noticed recently the Danes apologised to the Irish for the Viking incursions. To me this is utterly stupid. We need to remember history, but less of the finger pointing would also be good.
http://tinyurl.com/nlmfj6
“Personally I do not want any apologies for WW2…”
There is nothing personal about it: it’s an institution apologizing to an ethnic group. He is asking the government to recognize that the exclusion act was wrong, which apparently it has not done. He is not asking for an apology from someone, rather from an institution.
By the way, the US senate just yesterday apologized for the legalization of the slavery and racial discrimination of African Americans and I can tell you that I don’t feel guilty. Not sure why anyone would associate me with a law that was abolished long before I was born just because my government decided to apologize.
There is nothing personal about it: it’s an institution apologizing to an ethnic group.
Firstly how can an institution apologise? To paraphrase a famous line institutions don’t enslave people, people do. Secondly I think you are being disingeneous. This isn’t about an institution apologising, it is essentially one ethnic group apologising to another. It is all a part of the “white man he the devil” narrative so frequently parroted. It has cropped up today again here:
http://tinyurl.com/nuzcnx
You don’t see Manchus apologising to Hans, neither do you see African tribes or Arabs apologising for participating in and profiting from the slave trade, Mongols apologising to the Russians/Chinese/Arabs/most of the Eurasian continent and you don’t see much hay being made over the Maoris’ musket wars. The traffic appears to be in one direction and that direction imho is that it is in the service of the aforementioned narrative, whether intentioned or not. Little mention is ever made of the active collaboration of many ethnic groups in their own servitude. Instead we have this simplistic reading of history with its victims and oppressors and no real understanding of the highly complex nature of the power structures within which said groups operated. This is what I object to, and will continue to object to.
Well, something like this:
And the Congress “apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws.”
I bring little emotional baggage to the table when I read this statement. I take it at face value and leave guilt over the white man’s burden for a previous generation.
Litanies of past injustices lacking atonement don’t disqualify current pursuits to recognize cruelty. It’s not the nuances or complexity of the cruelty that is important. Rather cruelty is just wrong.
Sadly, a point that requires constant reminders – the point, I believe, Mr. Fong is making.
I think the main problem with Si’s argument is that a lot of people out there would still deny what the US government and many Americans did to others was wrong, or that it happened or was as bad as it actually was. There is still a need for people to learn about what happened, and to acknoweldge that it was wrong. I don’t think they need to feel personal guilt, but I think it’s necessary in order to actually put it behind us, and to create real “social harmony”.
@Tim et al.
Looks like we need to agree to disagree. Thanks for the polite debate!