Racialization of Chinese and other immigrants can be categorized into three areas: social, political, and economical. Examples in each category can be seen throughout not only the early (pre-1965) immigration of Chinese laborers but also in the post-1965 and even modern times. In this essay, the history of Chinese immigrants that lead up to the ruling on the case of People vs. Hall is examined to present five arguments that show social, political, and economical racialization.
Argument 1: The 1790 Nationality Act is an excellent example of political racialization that contributed to the society’s mindset and ultimately to the ruling of People v. Hall. The Naturalization Law prohibited any “non-whites” from being naturalized into a citizen.
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This was also a form of political racialization that resulted heavily from social and economic influences. At the time, white miners felt threatened by non-white laborers as competition for gold and wage, and demanded the segregation and exclusion of non-whites from mining. As Lee states, “competition intensified, and the Chinese miners became the targets of hostility and faced rigid racial prejudice from competing white miners as well as from local and state governments” (2015, 13-14). As a result, the enforced tax’s sole purpose was to impose a financial burden on those recognized by race to be ineligible for naturalization, in other words, non-whites (per Nationality Act). This was a political act (taxation) derived to address political and social concerns of the white laborers.
Argument3:
An example of economic racialization can be observed in the “dual wage system.” This system was employed to racially segregate the Chinese laborers from the white laborers and paid the Chinese less than the whites. This was an effective way to keep the wages low, however, a blatant racialization as it discriminated pay solely based on race and not on other factors such as performance. Author, Jonathan H. X. Lee, also states that this created a rift between the Asian and white laborers and ultimately led the white workers to demand “immigration exclusion” (2015, 16).
Argument
In order to protect the white working class, racial laws were created and directly targeted towards Chinese immigrants to protect their whiteness. Chapter seven explains the new threat of the arrival of Japanese immigrants in California. During the beginning of the anti-Chinese sentiment and white working-class racism, Japanese immigrants were also under the romanticized belief of
By ignoring racism, on a whole society will encourage lower wages and racism. Omi and Winant discuss in this chapter that their problem with the class-based paradigm is that it-ignored race. It puts all people on the same playing field, which we know isn’t true. Race does not follow class
Roger Daniel’s points out that there is masses of evidence pre dating the 1920s which can argue that hostility toward immigrants was certainly not a new development in America. This is an equally important factor as it shows there was always a flaw with the ‘melting pot’ theory and hostility was always a major part of America’s history. In the 1860s large numbers of Chinese immigrants flocked to America as cheap labour for projects such as the Union Pacific Railroad and by the 1870s there was over 1000,000 Chinese immigrants in the United States. They were often threatened with racial violence and driven out by WASPs who were threatened by the cheap labour they were willing to offer.
“New policies and laws, discoveries that took place afterward were the Scott Act, which would continue to prevent Chinese immigrants back into the United States after leaving over 20,000 immigrants with their Certificates of Return outside of the United States, and because of this act being passed many Chinese immigrants were often left out of the economy. The government, Congress was responsible for this act being passed as a way to underrepresent immigrants into the US and not allow people that weren’t willing to contribute overall, leading to more tension and conflict even after 6 years of the Exclusion Act being passed”. (Immigration History) The government and Congress were responsible for this act being passed as a way too underrepresented immigrants into the US and not allowing people that weren’t willing to contribute overall, and that led to more tension and conflict even after 6 years of the Exclusion Act being passed.
One of this week’s readings focused on Ch. 5, “Caged Birds,” in Professor Lytle Hernandez’s book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, and this chapter was particularly interesting because it further explained the development of immigration control in the United States. As a continuation from the last chapter, there was a huge emphasis in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Geary Act of 1892. This essentially prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, as well as eventually requiring these people to comply with regulations. “Caged Birds” encapsulates the events afterwards, as the book heads well into the early-1900’s. The disenfranchisement of immigrants develops towards further exclusivity because “[by] 1917, Congress had banned all Asian immigration to the Unites States and also categorically prohibited all prostitutes, convicts, anarchists, epileptics, ‘lunatics,’ ‘
Chinese immigrants came to the U.S for the california gold rush, this event provided many jobs, hope for a good future, and hope to give a good life to their families. Nativists
In the west wages were declining due to the Chinese immigrants taking jobs. Then the government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to protect the American’s jobs. The act stated no Chinese immigrants would be allowed in unless their parents lived in America. After this act was passed the main concern of the government was urbanization.
Many miners passed through this community on their way to work the Gold Mines. The miners faced a reality filled with discrimination as the white miners resented their presence. When finding gold did not pan out, many Chinese immigrants moved on to building railroads, but because they were willing to work much cheaper than others they were often treated harshly for taking the jobs of whites who were trying to support their families but were not willing to work for the same pay. Economic difficulties were not the only reason that ethnic Chinese were looked down upon, the creation of ethnic enclaves including the largely populated China Town in San Francisco, created an image of the Chinese that conflicted with the American culture of the time. In these communities they kept much of their culture from China, they didn’t need to speak English and were isolated from other communities.
Interviews Chinese immigration helped pave the road for Asian immigration in America. As quoted from Justice Harry A. Blackmun, "One last word: Diversity yields strength. To oppose it is to ignore and violate the American testament and its precious dream. " The Gold Rush, an event which lasted only a decade yet so crucial to American history in more ways than one, had an everlasting impact on the society that Americans live in today. Although their ethnic and cultural background may be different from other immigrants in the U.S., the Chinese immigrants helped shape and construct
It was a ten year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. In order to legally immigrate, citizens were required to have certification from the government to prove they were not laborers. The act defined the excludables as skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining. (Chinese
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large portion of Americans were restricted from civil and political rights. In American government in Black and White (Second ed.), Paula D. McClain and Steven C. Tauber and Vanna Gonzales’s power point slides, the politics of race and ethnicity is described by explaining the history of discrimination and civil rights progress for selective groups. Civil rights were retracted from African Americans and Asian Americans due to group designation, forms of inequality, and segregation. These restrictions were combatted by reforms such as the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc. Although civil and political
A new era of racism in America was dawning; whites struggled to survive the competitive economic market booming in the west, as well to replace deep-rooted superiority over blacks in efforts to drive the country closer toward industrialization. In this era, formerly coined as the “nadir of American race relations,” (Logan, 1954) racism in America reached morbidly new heights in the maltreatment of non-white people, which contrasted greatly with the American ideal of inalienable freedoms. The gold rush undoubtedly pressured whites to compete with both new and old opponents, beginning with
Because of this, the initial first response to this from the people in mainly city areas supported this because to them this meant more income from the overload of new job openings. Also this helped a large quantity of foreigners to take a liking to the increasing large amount of economic opportunities, which would lead to rapid urbanization, but they would soon find out that companies would only hire them for cheap labor because most likely they were not a legal citizen if they desired to work as fast as they could so that they had the ability to provide food on the table for their families. But that soon would become an issue because many of the workers for the industries were not paid enough especially for the amount of time they were sacrificing. As time kept ticking so did the industrial workers life line. The hardest part for the people who had these types of jobs was that there was a large amount of labor involved with very little pay and it wasn’t just men who worked these jobs, it was women and children 3 years old and up.
This was causing monopolies and a large population of Asians, overcoming the population. In document C it talks about how the Chinese had already began to monopolize the shoe, boot, and cigar industries and were starting to take over farming. This caused problems for many Americans and was quickly putting them out of work. That also brings up the point that the Chinese required fewer workers to complete a job because they did not require micromanagers. They could work independently and get the job done, therefore requiring less workers, as stated in document
Fahad Albrahim Response 1: Review/Summary: “Whiteness as property” is an article written by Cheryl Harris, in which she addresses the subject of racial identity and property in the United States. Throughout the article, professor Harris attempts to explain how the concept of whiteness was initiated to become a form of racial identity, which evolved into a property widely protected in American law (page 1713). Harris tackles a number of facts that describe the roots of whiteness as property in American history at the expense of minorities such as Black and American natives (page 1709). Additionally, Harris describes how whiteness as property evolved to become seen as a racial privilege in which the whites gained more benefits, whether