Tracing the Roots of Anti-Chinese Sentiments in US History

Abstract

To understand and confront the ongoing Asian/Chinese hate in the USA as another pandemic virus, this article digs into the root cause in history, as anti-Chinese sentiments are nothing new but invariably in a new context and with a new trigger. A close examination of how a racial hierarchy was constructed by the dominant group sets the stage for the study. The paradoxical relationship between the American ideal of equality and the racial hierarchy is discussed in depth. In doing so, we focus on the Chinese experience in the nineteenth century—the construction of the Transcontinental Rails and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943)—to argue that the roots of anti-Chinese sentiments rest in the racial hierarchy as well as its coexistence with the lofty ideal of freedom and equality.

1. Introduction

Chinese hate in a macro context: This is a study in the field of cultural and historical studies and squarely fits in the NGO category. The intended audience is historians, cultural studies scholars, students, teachers, researchers, and citizens in general. They are independent of government organizations. As an NGO project, the article is expected to reach out to an across-the-board audience and achieve its goal to contribute to the Asian/Chinese-American platform.

Studying the past is to understand the present and prepare for the future. The ideal of “E Pluribus Unum” (from Many, one) shakes and shapes an immigrant, multiracial, and multicultural America. Since the inception of the nation, at different historical moments and with different immigration waves, individuals across racial and ethnic backgrounds from the four corners of the world have gravitated to the American Dream that was born from “E Pluribus Unum.” As we approach the 250th anniversary of the USA, the questions are still hanging in the air: by now, is every American included and accepted equally in the land of the free and at the home of the brave? As a nation, have we achieved oneness from many and unity from diversity?

Over the past 3 years, the global-scaled pandemic has unleashed coronavirus in its original version and in its vicious variants; it has killed more than 6 million deaths, paralyzed the economy, and wreaked havoc with many aspects of our daily life. While the world is facing and dealing with the pandemic-caused damage and destruction, the pandemic has brought upon the Asian-American community another type of virus, that is, anti-Asian virus. In the United States, hatred, discrimination, and violence particularly against Chinese immigrants and East-Asian looking individuals have been on the rise and spiked. Once again, the Chinese are perceived as “Yellow Peril,” a threat mixed of the health with the politics. Fueled by President Trump’s racially charged epithets “China Virus” or “Kung flu,” from the West to East coasts, hate crimes have been become daily news. Fellow Americans assault Chinese/East Asian Americans just because of physical looks and racial profiling. The words of the leader of the free world do matter. When Trump spews the lie that the Chinese have created and spread the virus, certain groups of the population are incited to commit hate crimes. Restaurants in China Towns are vandalized, East-Asian looking frontline doctors and nurses are harassed, children of Chinese descent are bullied at school, and passengers in public transportation are verbally abused and, in some instances, physically attacked. This reopens historical wounds, lacerated by the blade of the “Yellow Peril,” and adds the latest chapter to a long anti-Chinese/Asian history.

The repeatedly wounded experience of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, aka, the AAPI, is one of many racially charged phenomena throughout US history. The result? In 2022, the Chinese-Americans, and AAPI citizens in general still do not wield enough political presence to stop fellow citizens from deploying racist ideas and practices. Their invisibility and silence render the AAPI individuals unimportant and even non-existent, and at the same time, perpetuate the portrayal of foreignness, and peddle the myth of Asian-Americans’ unassimilatedness in the American Melting Pot.

Addressing the current cultural landscape that conceals some minefields for Asians and particularly for Chinese-Americans, this essay traces the historical roots of discrimination against Chinese Americans. It focuses on two aspects: one is the historical and cultural context of a racial hierarchy, and the other, the hurdles for the Chinese-Americans, like other marginalized races, to move up on such a racial and power hierarchy. We revisit the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Chinese Exclusion Act. These events coincide with the timeframe of the formation of the nation, thus drawing a blueprint of anti-Chinese sentiments.

2. Tracing the roots of anti-Chinese sentiments in US history

In the American Melting Pot dwell people from the four corners of the world. Asians were not exempt from being “properly” placed where they “belong.” The term “Asian” can “spark a full range of reactions in the USA, from being represented or misrepresented to being celebrated or denigrated” [1]. Immigrants of Asian descent can trace back their origins in “more than twenty countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia, across the Pacific and Indian Oceans” [1]. They are the largest Asian origin group, “making up 24% of the Asian population, or 5.4 million people” (According to the 2021 Census Bureau population estimate. My quote is from https://www.google.com/search?q=the+percentage+of+Chinese+Americans+in+Asian+Americans&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS715US715&oq=the+percentage+of+Chinese+Americans+in+Asian+Americans&aqs=chrome..69i57.13264j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) and bearing the brunt of shared racism and discrimination. For an in-depth understanding of how the notion of Asian racial inferiority was constructed in US history, this article focuses on the Chinese-Americans, instead of covering the vast inner-Asian-group diversity.

With the slowly increased visibility of the AAPI community in US society and the progress of civil rights, anti-Asian sentiments have taken up less crude and less institutionalized forms when compared with the ones during the Chinese Exclusion Era, 1882–1943. However, the twenty-first century US still perpetuates these sentiments on multiple fronts, and Asian hate oozes from wherever there is a porous surface. Like discrimination and racism experienced by other racial and ethnic groups, anti-Asian sentiments are multi-dimensional, interweaving historical, cultural, and social origins with a myriad of covert and overt acts in the present day. First, we take a close look at the historical and cultural context that conceives the seed and grows a racial hierarchy. Then, we locate where the Chinese have been situated on the racial hierarchy. Navigating through historical knowledge and cultural understanding, we underscore that the Chinese-American experience is an inherent and integral part of the American experience, and for the Chinese-Americans, the road to equality and inalienable rights has been longer and more treacherous than the one for the White and some non-White Americans.

2.1 A racial hierarchy built in “the city upon a hill” and “the Empire of Liberty”

This notion of racial inferiority has hit Chinese Americans throughout history. It speaks of the cultural roots of anti-Asianism in the USA. The global-scaled pandemic has unleashed coronavirus but also anti-Asian virus. In recent years, we have been witnessing a steep surge of hate crimes and violence in the USA, correlating with the Asian American Pacific Islander group in ways that reinforce the effects of past, then-lawful discrimination. Anti-Asian sentiments are nothing new in US history since the mid-nineteenth century with the first wave of East Asian immigrants and the notorious Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943). At a time when historical wounds are cut (re)open, and the lingering pandemic continues to expose the racial profiling of the “Yellow Peril,” Asian-Americans, particularly those who look like Chinese, find themselves as a perennial target for hatred, distrust, and violence. Race relation in the US often refers to a Black-and-White binary. The pandemic-related racial profiling however reminds us once again that race relation goes beyond a binary; it stretches to and intersects with what surfaces nearby the black-and-white binary. The Chinese, not black and not white, are interwoven into a colossal racial web that, at a given moment, includes while excluding, elevates certain racial groups while lowering or simply stepping on other ones, and protects freedom and equality of some while depriving these unalienable rights form others. The paradoxical duality struggles to define patriotism and nationalism, so much so that American cultural values since the inception conceived a vertical racial hierarchy inextricably associated with the lofty ideals of freedom and equality.

These cultural paradoxes, once built into the very foundation of the nation, can be traced to the very beginning when the British explored and settled in North America in the seventeenth century, and throughout the heyday of the first British empire in the eighteenth century across the Atlantic. America exerted fascination and idealization in such a way that puritan settlers regarded it as a promised land where they were destined to build a model city for the world to see. As a self-proclaimed builder, John Winthrop preached a sermon “A Model City of Christian Charity” in 1630 [2]. Since then, “a city upon a hill” has grown out of biblical pages to become a blueprint for a budding culture to grow and for a national psyche to develop. To pursue a life of freedom, happiness, and equality is thus intimately aligned with the aspirations and nature of “a city upon a hill.” Most importantly, the belief in a “beacon of hope” to illuminate the four corners of the world [2] drove the early puritan settlers to view this model city as a providential mission and themselves as chosen builders. Thus, a corresponding historical, religious, and sociopolitical order must be established to carry out such a mission and deliver such a belief. When adhering themselves to the qualities and attributes of the chosen people in the model city, the Anglo-Saxon puritans’ sense of superiority and exclusivity immediately sparked and took roots in America; it quickly found its way into the foundation of the culture and the psyche of a nation-to-be. As this happened, the seeds of a racial hierarchy were planted in the “city” and the “beacon of hope” had its light ensconced from a chosen angle by the chosen holders. The ideal of freedom and equality was unwittingly thrown to a test that would write US history.

The racial hierarchy in US history was not erected overnight. Once regarding themselves as builders of a shining and model city upon the hill, as preached by Winthrop, the early puritan settlers took no time to build an Anglo-centered power base in the new world and position themselves as its protagonist. “The shining city” thus encapsulated an inherently Anglo space in the unfolding landscape of race relations and cultural characters. Native Americans bore no relevance to “the shining city,” as in the minds of the early Anglo Protestants, the two worlds were not designed to merge. As the original owners and dwellers of American land, the Native Americans on one hand were not accounted for, in fact, entirely discarded from the history-making and culture-shaping project of building a model city. On the other hand, because of the political/religious and economic interests of this shining city project, native territories were encroached on, tribal political sovereignty was violated, and the indigenous way of life was ruined. All this was done to accommodate the building of the model city and to make the builders, aka, the group of the chosen people, possible to carry out their destined American Project of a shining model city.

When it comes to the definition of America and its cultural characteristics, the Anglo builders had no intention to include anyone who looked different from them. The advantage to be the first cross-Atlantic to lay out the rules and set up governing bodies in the new world unapologetically secured the early English-speaking settlers a ruling station at the very top of a hierarchy of power. On the highest tier of the hierarchy, the Anglo Protestants rule over who got included or excluded from the model city. From the very beginning, the power to shape American culture and institutions has rested in the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestants’ (the WASP) hands—an explicit WASP power base and an implicit WASP-dominated racial hierarchy. The early colonists, as chosen and superior individuals, inserted themselves on the top of the pecking order in the new world and perpetuated the consistently implied message of their superiority, authority, and power. Further, through successive periods of history, the English language, Christianity (Protestantism), and unbreakable British ties and institutions were inherited and embraced in America. Institutionally and culturally, the WASP values and interests were set up as the standards and the main definer for the new nation. A racial and cultural hierarchy was erected in the psyche of the nation. In fact, this hierarchy “has never been altered, in spite of the challenges of new cultural DNA pooled from the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement in particular” [2].

In inclusion and exclusion, the model city blueprinted a nation; the power hierarchy evolved into an architecture upon which a Euro-centric culture was sprouted like climbing vines. This is an architecture that supports a power hierarchy as well as a racial hierarchy, with continuous inclusion and exclusion, revolving around the will, the need, and the interests of the WASPs. Behind the noble and humanistic ideal of freedom and equality, an underlying racial hierarchy was taking place, permeating the fabric of the society and infiltrating institutions, organizations, and systems.

The sense of moral superiority and the sense of a divine mission set the early WASPs free from persecution and injustice exercised in the old world. At the same time, these “common senses” tied them to a blithe proprietorship of righteousness and entitlement, dressed with the ideal of freedom and equality. In 1780, Thomas Jefferson used the phrase “Empire of Liberty” to describe the new nation in his letter to George Rogers Clark (http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Empire_of_liberty). While the American Revolution was still being fought, Jefferson set his goal to create an imperial America that would extend westwards over the entire American continent. In 1804 right after the Louisiana Purchase 1803, he made his presidential intention explicit to duplicate “a government so free and economical as ours, as a great achievement to the mass of happiness which is to ensue” (Jefferson to Dr. Joseph Priestley, 29 January 1804 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-42-02-0322). As the Empire of Liberty doubled in the territory, the model city in New England sent its builders to the American West and the Pacific shores. The WASP values and Anglo power hierarchy traveled throughout from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. Interventionism and expansionism went hand in hand and were regarded as proactive and benevolent for America’s visibility and influence in a new world order as well as for a power hierarchy and control in the newly doubled territory at home. The “Empire of Liberty” envisaged by Jefferson extended “the City upon a hill” Westwards over the American continent.

In the process of achieving happiness for the mass, the triangle slave trade—Africa to West Indies to North America—prospered and African slaves proved to be commodities, laying the economic foundation of “the Empire of Liberty.” In the WASP-dominated racial hierarchy, the African slaves were placed on the bottom tier. Yes, they were part of the model city and the Empire of Liberty, dehumanized and exploited with no rights and no upward opportunities. For slave builders of the Empire of Liberty, the pursuit of freedom, happiness, and equality sounded like a cruel irony and a remote fantasy. Clearly, these grand pursuits were only intended for the WASPS, particularly the male WASPS. With the presence of African slaves staggered below Native Americans in social status, the new republic could not help but let a racial hierarchy take roots in its economy, market, and trade. Like Native Americans, African Americans found no dignified place for them in the model city or the Empire liberty, except at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy. As the nation was in the making, especially in the first 100 years of US history, a racial hierarchy was step by step contoured and configured. Skin colors became colors of power, control, access, and social status. Most significantly, the color line was drawn between those who belong to the shining, model city, by extension, the Empire of Liberty, and those who do not. Nation building built the racial hierarchy and the racial hierarchy became part of the nation.

2.2 Immigration and nativism: placing the Chinese on the racial hierarchy

Nativism stemmed from anti-immigration sentiments. In addition to Native Americans and African slaves, racial diversity encompasses immigrants in an immigrant country. This is particularly true when examining the Asian American experience. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw settlers coming to these shores for personal freedom and relief from political and religious persecution. The nineteenth century witnessed massive immigrants to the USA, fleeing famine and crop failure, seeking land and job opportunities, and avoiding high taxes. The US was perceived as the land of economic opportunity, not unlike the present day. During the period of 1870–1900, the vast majority of immigrants were from Germany, Ireland, and England—the principal sources of immigration before the Civil War. Parallelly starting from the mid-nineteenth century, a relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States. Back in China, the late 1880s can only be described as a chaotic society in the post-Opium War instability, consumed with poverty, famine, displacement and violence. Especially along the southern coastal areas like Guangdong and Hainan provinces and their seaport towns, starvation, destitution, and diseases went rampant. To escape the internal chaos and find a better life was a natural impetus for the southerners; the Chinese from Guangzno had the advantage of being closer to seaports than their inland countrymen. Macao, a southern China seaport colonized by the Portuguese, and Hong Kong, another port colonized by the British, thus became the West Africa in East Asia in recruiting, selling, and shipping Chinese labors, known as “coolies,” meaning “heavy-duty” labors.

As a result of these historical circumstances, the mid-nineteenth century exodus of opportunity seekers from China crossed the Pacific with destinations in both North and South Americas. In the USA, the major influx of the Chinese immigrants landed in California during the gold rush 1849–1882, even when federal law stopped their immigration. Before landing in the Americas, the coolies were already second-class citizens at the disposal of their sellers and buyers in the labor market. “Even the willing immigrants did not leave as colonists to a new home. They desired to be sojourners—to earn money and then return to China” [3]. Those who were not recruited by European labor dealers, escaped from the two ports—Macao and Hong Kong—by whatever means. Most of the Chinese who came to the Americas were male farmers and villagers; they typically glued together in an unknown and often hostile environment. Many of them were from the same village or the same extended family. In the USA, they largely congregated in the West around San Francisco area.

From White American establishments’ viewpoint, the Chinese was out of place and incongruent with the racial make-up in the American soil. The arrival of the Chinese stirred up a similar racial resentment. Historian Erica Lee points out, “American xenophobia came to focus more on race rather than on religion during the anti-Chinese movement” [4]. Immediately placed on one of the lowest tiers on the racial hierarchy, “the Chinese immigrants were a distinct people […] whom nature has marked as inferior” [5]. At the same time, the Chinese immigration “was described as an invasion” [6]. San Francisco mayor Frank McCoppin described the Chinese as: “‘[…] thoroughly antagonistic in every particular, in race, color, language, religion, civilization, and habits of life all together from our people.’ Should Chinese immigration continue unchecked, he dramatically claimed, they would simply run over our land” [7].

It was a clearly anti-Chinese climate. As mentioned previously, in the nineteenth century and especially the second half, there was an unprecedented surge of immigration waves. Irish and German immigrants in the mid and late nineteenth century drove the statics. “Between 1800 and 1930, more than 4.5 million Irish immigrants came to the USA, including 1.5 million in the 1840s and 1850s” (https://www.google.com/search?q=immigration+in+the+19th+century+in+the+united+states&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS715US715&oq=immigration+in+the+19th+century+in+&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j33i160l5j33i299j33i22i29i30l3.12031j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). While the Chinese started to find their way into the USA during the second half of the nineteenth century, Northern and Western Europeans including Great Britain never stopped their entries, and in fact, they accelerated immigration in numbers and frequency, overwhelming the number of the Chinese. Nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the USA between 1870 and 1900. The absolute number of immigrants in the country rose from less than 2.5 million in 1850 to more than 13.5 million in 1910 [8]. That boosted immigrants as a share of the population to 15%, from 10%, over the period [8]. The anti-Chinese climate was well situated in the massive immigration backdrop. In the face of the “threat” of increased Catholic and other non-Protestant presence, the fear to take away native-born Americans’ jobs and “pollute” American values overshadowed the sociopolitical and cultural landscape. In terms of the Chinese presence, fear towards them is an understatement. Because of the non-white race of the Chinese, their non-Christian way of life, and their non-alphabetic language, the Chinese experienced a multiply charged hatred and discrimination in comparison with their White European immigrant counterparts. Bearing no relevance to Native Americans, WAST-centered nativism subjugated all immigrants, whether of Euro-descent or Asian descent, to a racial and cultural hierarchy.

Nativism was the signature of the Know Nothing Party in the mid-1885, which was also known as the American Party, a significant third party in US history. At its height in the 1850s, “the Know Nothing party, included more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen state legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians” [9]. The Know Nothing Party had its origin in the secret society, known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner or OSSB [9]. The OSSB was:

… a pureblooded pedigree of Protestant Anglo-Saxon stock and the rejection of all Catholics. And above all, members of the secret society weren’t allowed to talk about the secret society. If asked anything by outsiders, they would respond with, “I know nothing.” [9].

“Party members supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office” [9]. The Know Nothing party eventually pushed forward a nativist movement in defense of the exclusiveness and purity of the Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. In doing so, as Lorraine Boissoneault argues, the party members “wanted to restore their vision of what America should look like with temperance, Protestantism, self-reliance, with American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation’s highest values” [9]. More than that, the nativist movement conveniently aligned the WASP core values with the sacred Star Spangled Banner and dictated that the WASPs were the only and pure Americans in blood and in faith. Anyone who deviated from the WASP version of America would be deemed undesirable and must be regarded as un-American and unfit for the Republic. Thus, inflamed xenophobia, conspiracy theories, and anti-immigration, coupled with racism and discrimination, erupted in tandem at the height of immigration waves in the mid-nineteenth century. All this created an intolerant, exclusive, and vertical culture as well as a power order, where the racial hierarchy took its firm hold.

To address nativism, historian John Higham (1920–2003) in his landmark book Strangers in the land: patterns of American nativism, 1860–1925 [10] “makes clear in his account that he feels nativism was basically a variant of nationalism” especially during the period that he studied [11]. In his view, nativism acts “as a defensive type of nationalism or an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of the group’s foreign connections” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_(politics)). We argue that the intense nationalism adheres to the WASP values, associated with the model city upon a hill, its chosen builders, and ultimately, the Empire of Liberty; it became a racial nationalism. Higham also defines nativism as a set of attitudes or a state of mind and sets his work to “trace an emotionally charged impulse” rather than “an actual social process or condition” [12]. Whether socially and psychologically, it is the racial nationalism derived from nativism effectively situates the Chinese on one of the lowest tiers of the racial hierarchy. Further, it sparked and fueled anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiments at the early stage of the Republic.

2.3 The railroad construction and the Chinese exclusion act: constitutionalizing the racial hierarchy

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America, as an emerging world power about to enter the “Gilded Age.” The country was in need of a lifeline linking the country from east to west; that lifeline was the Transcontinental Railroad. At the cheapest possible cost, who would be the hardworking and life-risking workers to construct America’s lifeline through the most treacherous terrain on the West coast? The answer was clear, the Chinese. On one hand, the Yellow Peril disrupted the harmony of “the model city on the hill,” and threatened its purity. Then, on the other hand, the cheap Chinese workers were much in need for the construction of the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad. They were needed in the building of an America that would become a superpower in the world.

Since the early nineteenth century, the arrival of the Chinese consistently stirred up racial resentment. They came first as merchants and sailors and then were bought or brought to American soil to construct railroads as cooli from the 1850s to 1860s. Racially inferior in American racial hierarchy, the work ethic, endurance, and irreplaceable contributions of the Chinese were unjustly erased from history. Instead, their physical attributes and the perceived threat to the “pure blood” of those on the top tier stood out as a national issue. “The Chinese immigrants were a distinct people […] whom nature has marked as inferior” [5]. The Chinese immigration “was described as an invasion” [6]. The previous section discussed the then San Francisco mayor Frank McCoppin’s unvarnished racist, derisive, and threatened views on the Chinese; he represented the institutionalized mindset of the White establishment. To coexist with the Chinese posed the Yellow Peril to the White norms and Christian ways of life. The Chinese culture, with a foundation in Taoism, stresses the balance between the Yin and the Yang to maintain the Tao in the cycle of life and in harmony with nature’s laws in any surroundings. However, their presence in the WASP’s model city upon a hill certainly disrupted the WASP’s order and disharmonized the White purity. The cultural and racial distance made the Chinese “unassimilable,” “disharmonious,” and perilous to the model city as well as to the Empire of Liberty.

In the 1860s, the Chinese were employed to build the Central Pacific portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. It was when the joint forces of xenophobia and racism openly identified the Chinese as the Yellow Peril and fueled the creation of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This only race-based law in the USA effectively banned further Chinese immigration as well as naturalization. The anti-Chinese line extended through the McCarthy era, the Cold War, and in the last four decades, the trade war and the competition in the global market. Not surprisingly, the anti-Chinese sentiments once again are of the closet in the present pandemic and post-pandemic time.

The racial element in the Sinophobia throughout American history and nation building sets it apart from other anti-immigration laws and policies. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Know Nothing Party waged an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish and anti-immigration movement. Scrutinizing the xenophobic framework of nativism, Lee discusses the particular Chinese racial element in Ref. to the Irish and Catholic “inferiority”: “Although the Know Nothings had claimed that Irish belonged to the so-called Celtic race, the Irish had always remained white. The Chinese were different. They were unquestionably not white and would never be able to become ‘American,’ anti-Chinese activists argued” [13]. Once again, the racial hierarchy embraced by nativists reminded us that citizenship was based on one’s religion, skin color and physical attributes.

White European immigrants were fragmented and hierarchized within themselves more in religion and social status than race. In the face of the Chinese presence, all of a sudden, the Euro-immigrants magically became cohesive and united because of the similarity of their skin color. The shared whiteness was too akin to be shattered once a drastically different presence irrupted on the scene—the distant Chinese alien embodying the Yellow Peril and contaminating the American landscape. Lee continues her analysis by quoting the statements made at the San Francisco meeting on the Chinese immigration, recorded in San Francisco Bulletin, April 17, 1876: “Instead, the Chinese” are of a distinct race, of a different and particular civilization,’ one anti-Chinese resolution proclaimed at the San Francisco meeting. ‘They do not speak our language, do not adopt our manners, customs or habits, are Pagan in belief.’ The Chinese immigration, the organization committee, concluded, was “an evil of great present magnitude” [13]. Thus, the Chinese found themselves condemned to an invisible chain hooked tightly to the bottom of the racial hierarchy in the land of the free.

Anti-Chinese politicians and activists gave little thought to “African Americans, Mexican Americans, and the hundreds of indigenous nations who were already present in California” [14]. These individuals were not considered citizens or full citizens in the Republic, therefore, totally irrelevant to the American ideal of freedom and equality. Meanwhile, not without struggles, all European immigrants were successively admitted to the category of “our own people” [14]. In Lee’s arguments, a multiple equation can be established: whiteness equals “our own people,” “our own people” equals European descendants, European descendants equal good and noble, good and noble equal America, Americas equals the ideal of democracy and freedom. Therefore, whiteness is superior and the definition of America, and anything otherwise would logically be rendered as un-American or anti-American or simply evil. On the flip side, the “evil” of the Yellow Peril consists of the potential to make America impure of whiteness, English language, and Christianity/Protestantism; or even worse, to make America unrecognizable with the presence of a race that is so different in every possible way.

If the Chinese immigration is not curtailed and restricted, “Chinese would occupy the entire Pacific coast, build a colony, and wipe out the white population. The people of California had but one disposition upon this grave subject […] and that is an open and pronounced demand upon the Federal Government for relief” [15]. Therefore, to exclude the Chinese from American society and rid the Chinese from American soil is an act of nationalism and patriotism, defending white men’s power base and the “American” values. The passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act “legalized xenophobia on an unprecedented scale” [4]. Sinophobia integrates xenophobia with racism; this gives constitutional green light to virulence and violence towards the Chinese.

In relation to the Chinese, the racial hierarchy was most visible and felt during the 1860s and 1870s, especially during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, coinciding with the Civil War and Reconstruction. Transcontinental railroads were seen as a connecting line that would bring the nation together, economically, politically, and culturally. As lifelines integrating eastern and western markets, the rails were much-needed engines of growth and production but also of uniting a deeply divided nation. The Chinese experience was inserted in the construction of the Transcontinental Rails, which represented endless possibilities for the country’s connections and integration. Symbolically, the project would bring Americans together and flatten race relations in the building of a connected nation. Nonetheless, this proved to be a two-decade prelude to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

The promoters of the Central Pacific, Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads had lucrative goals in mind before anything else. Chinese immigrants were cheap and handy laborers to be employed for the construction of the western portion of the railroad—the Central Pacific line that began in Sacramento. The transcontinental railroads were built in an environment with limited regulatory capacity. Historian Ronald Takaki addresses the racial inequity in that era, “Chinese laborers were paid thirty-one dollars each month, and while white workers were paid the same, they were also given room and board” [16]. Many of them did not speak English and kept the Chinese village/peasant way of life. The only goal for them was to make some money and send it back home. Poverty and desperation reduced them to endure inhuman conditions and treatments without a voice. Hardworking, handy, disciplined, diligent, and quiet, they made ideal workers in the field.

In time, the railroad construction employers realized the advantages of low waged Chinese workers, “Chinese labor proved to be Central Pacific’s salvation” [17], and “was the most vital source for constructing the railroad” [18]. That Central Pacific covers treacherous terrain with the need for both low-skilled and skilled labor. Chinese immigrants proved to be the most vital source in the labor market, as they had exactly what was needed for the job. Fifty Cantonese emigrant workers were hired by the Central Pacific Railroad in February 1865 on a trial basis, and soon more and more Cantonese emigrants were hired [19]. As many as 20,000 Chinese workers helped build the treacherous western portion of the railroad, known as the Central Pacific. The Chinese workers distinguished themselves for obedience to the authority, endurance of hardship, diligence to carry out their duties, dexterity in manual work, inscrutability in their thinking and feelings, and the lack of the ability to command English language, to grasp Western cultural nuances and to file a complaint for unequal pay. All these incongruent characteristics played a double-edged sword in defining Chinese workers’ cultural space in relation to the epic project of the Continental Railroad.

On May 10, 1869, the inauguration of the first Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory, Utah should have been a seminal and redeeming page in the history of the Chinese immigrants, but it turned out to be a historical moment of humiliation for the Chinese. When the authorities of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads came together to celebrate the joining the tracks, “[…] many of the workers who had built the railroad were all but invisible at the ceremony, and in its retelling for many years afterward. They included about 15,000 Chinese immigrants—up to 90 percent of the work force on the Central Pacific line—who were openly discriminated against, vilified and forgotten” [20].

The Transcontinental Railroad was a joint venture, carried out by both Chinese and Irish workers. One laid tracks eastward to build the Central Pacific line, and one created westward the other portion of the nation’s lifeline—the Union Pacific line. Both raced to Promontory Summit, Utah to meet. Museums and libraries keep precious pictures from May 10, 1869, only to show Irish workers celebrating the joining of the tracks with the leaders of both lines. The Chinese workers were however conspicuously invisible, not in the picture, because they were “an inferior race,” so determined California senator, business tycoon, and founder of Stanford University Mr. Leland Stanford. As a major investor in the Central Pacific line, Mr. Stanford had no intention to include the Chinese laborers in the pictures taken on that glorious day for the nation and thus they were purposefully discarded from history.

Transcontinental Railroad marked a transformation from a months-long journey to a-week travel across the country and re-conceptualized time and space in a revolutionary way. Chang and Fishkin state that “in the United States, the story of the transcontinental railroad is usually rendered within the parameters of the grand rise of the American nation” [21]. It boosted national pride and unity. Chang and Fishkin continue to expand the cultural meaning of the transcontinental railroads:

Begun in 1862 and completed in 1869, the first transcontinental line is celebrated in mainstream American life as well as in scholarship as one of the signal episodes of national life, elevated by some even to the level of importance of the Declaration of Independence. The railroad is honored as a “marvel” of American engineering and energy, as a “work of giants.” It is presented as a physical and metaphoric bind that united the nation politically, economically, and socially. Linked to the recent end of the Civil War, the completion of the first transcontinental railroad is presented as a heroic contribution in over-coming the bloody division and in healing national wounds [22].

While the nation was on the rise and in celebration, the Chinese sank into its bottom and vanished in obscurity in spite of their vital role in building the nation. To address the “Yellow Peril” and guard the “purity” of American values, on May 6th, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act. This piece of federal legislation was designed as never before to single out a particular race and nationality for exclusion—the Chinese. Barring those already here from citizenship and making it illegal for them to come to America for work. Only the Chinese who had been born in the USA or who came to the USA as merchants, students and tourists were allowed to enter [23]. Chinese laborers residing in California before 1880 were allowed to remain; once they left the United States, however, they could not return [23]. The Exclusion Act constitutionalized the racial hierarchy and made it clear how the nation defines who an American was and what being an American meant. By the Constitution, it sends the Chinese to the very bottom of the racial hierarchy. The particular exclusion of the Chinese remained intact and practically helpless from 1882 to 1943, when the law was finally repealed by the Magnuson Act.

3. Conclusion: the American experiment

As an immigrant country, the United States is a constellation of cultures, traditions, and people from the four corners of the world. The African-Americans, the Asian-Americans, the Hispanic-Americans, the Native Americans, and the White Americans have been interacting with one another for almost 250 years since 1776 if we set the pre-1776 history aside. After a close examination of the Chinese experience and the roots of anti-Chinese sentiments in the USA, the term “melting pot” sounds like a cliché. The making of the USA has shown the “pot” was initially designed by the WASPs and did not necessarily fit everyone. The unavoidable coexistence of the fit and the unfit sparks the paradox of the ideal of equality and the racial hierarchy, both embedded in the Constitution, the sociopolitical systems, the cultural and religious institutions, and above all, in the psyche of the nation. The interactions among different racial groups have never been all roses and blue skies, but full of encounters, confrontations, negotiations, rejections, or at times, assimilations. In some cases, violence and bloodshed are the cost for freedom and racial justice. The Chinese-American experience testifies to how a racial hierarchy was built side by side with the building of the nation, how it can dehumanize and make certain race or ethnicity sink into hopeless darkness in the name of nationalism and patriotism.

Like the good and the evil on the same tree in the Garden of Eden, the WASPs’ ideal for freedom and equality has indeed become a beacon to the world. It has and will continue to attract countless immigrants to these shores for the undying American Dream. Nonetheless, along the way, the WASPs and general White-establishments assigned democracy, freedom, and equality exclusively to themselves with no regard to groups and individuals of color. The irreconcilable duality of equality/discrimination, inclusion/exclusion, and acceptance/rejection among others coexisted in the Founding Fathers, White cultural thinkers and architects as well as in non-White communities. The American racial hierarchy was born from a sense of racial and cultural superiority because of the need to control, be in charge, and rule. Although not immediately explicit on the surface, the racial hierarchy permeates the fabric of our society. It has caused the darkest and unforgivable moments in history, traumatized people of color from generation to generation, divided the nation into unbridgeable tribes, and stirred up bitter cultural wars. Clearly, the Chinese-American experience is part of a much bigger American story. The Chinese had and still have to struggle for their place in the American narrative.

America has a destiny. More than three fourths of the world immigrants have ended up in these lands, where people find themselves in a kaleidoscope of races and ethnicities, religious backgrounds, and multi-languages. To achieve an integral and harmonious existence driven by equality, America has to be a colossal and cosmic experiment with a constellation of diversities. The Chinese experience is one test of the colossal American experiment to prove the uttermost ideal of freedom and equality and to overcome the racial hierarchy. Pulitzer prize winning-author Jill Lepore in her recent book These Truths: A History of the United States [24] dances back and forth between empirical history and intellectual history when examining the American experiment. To the author, American culture is a process of contested and tested truths (in plural), but to grasp the ultimate truth one has to deal with contradictory truths along the way:

The American experiment had not ended. A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos. A nation founded on universal rights will wrestle against the forces of particularism. A nation toppled a hierarchy of birth only to erect a hierarchy of wealth will never know tranquility. A nation of immigrants cannot close its borders. And a nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of history [25].

Equality and racial hierarchy contradict one another. They must be the American Experiment, as history has shown there have always been two forces in competition: one subjects the Chinese to the racial hierarchy and one pushes the Chinese to fight for freedom and equality—the same American Dream embraced by the WASPs and non-WASPs. With the understanding of the anti-Chinese roots in history, the force that pulls the Chinese away from the racial hierarchy continues to do so in the present moment.