U.S. discrimination against Chinese laborers and Asian immigrants

United States Relations with Ethnic and Racial Communities
Introduction
In the nearly two and half long centuries’ history of the United States, the nation has scarcely ever had a good or positive relationship with ethnic and racial communities. Though it became a nation of immigrants after the wave of Europeans from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland and France came over (following the first wave of English Protestants and Puritans in the colonies), the immigrants were never really thought highly of by that first wave of White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who defined much of the way in which the nation viewed minorities. For example, it was decided and espoused that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny” to conquer the Native Americans in the Southwest (O’Sullivan, 1845), to take land from the Hispanics in Mexico, and to push the boundaries of the U.S. all the way to the Pacific (and from there the same ruling class of WASPs—and later the rising class of Jews in the 20th century, led by men like Felix Frankfurter and Rabbi Wise—pushed even further, into Asia and then throughout Europe by entering into both WW1 and WW2, though neither conflict had anything to do with the U.S.) (Weir, 2014). The history of U.S. relations with the ethnic and racial communities of its regions has always been one of tension. This paper will describe that history, paying particular attention to the southwest and California to show how the relationship has tended to be toxic.
The Chinese
The Chinese helped to build the railroad out west in the 19th century. They worked under brutal conditions—the hot, blazing sun; the dry heat; long hours without much break or water—all for low wages as they pounded iron together so that the barons of industry could move their products and goods from the east to the west without any trouble. For all their work, were they rewarded with praise, appreciation and citizenship? No, and on the contrary they were ostracized because of their Asian ethnicity and race. The WASP culture of the elite ruling class did not want to see voting rights or equal rights handed out to just anyone. In fact by 1882, WASPs did not want to see anymore Chinese laborers in the U.S.—not on the railroads and not in the mines—though to be sure the labor was very nearly completed by then—so the decision was just as much related to business as it was to xenophobia.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 put a 10 year hiatus on Chinese immigration into the U.S. There would be no more Chinese laborers admitted from 1882 to 1892. It was the first time in U.S. history a specific ethnicity was singled and told it could not be part of the American nation for a period of time. It also established “the groundwork for other racially motivated laws that followed” (Hafetz, 2012, p. 628). The relationship between the U.S. and Asians did not improve in the 20th century. After Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan in WW2, Asian Americans were rounded up by Executive Order and placed in concentration camps in California, as the government under FDR suspected they might all be traitors or spies and the government felt it could not run any political risks in letting them remain free. Of course, this was the same policy enacted by Hitler in Germany under the Third Reich regarding people it viewed as political enemies—but the U.S. government did not seem to notice the similarity (Austin, 2004).
Thus, the relationship of the U.S. with Asians in the southwest and California has never been one of great trust and respect. The U.S. basically used the Chinese in the 19th century as slave labor and then when the labor was finished refused to let anymore Chinese enter the country for a whole decade. The WASP ruling class did not want anymore Asians coming in and they continued to manifest the xenophobia during WW2 when they took California Asians out of their homes and placed them in concentration camps.
Latinos
The relationship between the U.S. and Latinos in the southwest was hardly any better than it was with the Asians. Latinos first had their territory stolen from them when the U.S. annexed Texas from Mexico. They basically were the first victims of O’Sullivan’s “Manifest Destiny” philosophy, though of course they were not the last. Like the Native Americans, Asians and blacks, Latinos were viewed as sub-species by the WASP ruling elites. That was why there were laws against miscegenation, particularly in California, well into the 20th century. The case of Perez v. Sharp in 1948 was one example of how it was forbidden for whites to marry anyone outside their race in California. Perez was actually a Mexican-American woman—a Latino—and she wanted to marry an African American man named Davis. They were denied a marriage license, however, by Sharp, who worked for the California state government because of the California laws on miscegenation, which had been on the books for a hundred years already.
Perez filed suit because she felt it was her right as a Roman Catholic to marry whomever she wanted (both Perez and Davis were Catholics). Her argument was that California’s laws on miscegenation violated her 14th Amendment rights. The California Supreme Court ultimately sided with her and said that the state had no right to interfere with the marriage issue and that the state’s anti-miscegenation law was unconstitutional. This was a major breakthrough for race relations in California. However, it would not put an end to the relations between ethnic minorities and California authorities—particularly in L.A., where troubles continued throughout the rest of the 20th century, all the way from the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943 to the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots that took place in the 1990s.
The relationship between the U.S. and Latinos in the Southwest was also strained during WW2, when the U.S. implemented the Bracero Program. Latinos had been used in agriculture in the U.S. since the 1920s (Hernandez, 2006), however, it was WW2 that really ramped up their usage in the agriculture industry. Known as the Mexican Farm Labor Program, the Bracero Program was implemented in order to make sure there was no shortage of labor on American farms while the white working hands went to fight for Uncle Sam. However, when the war was over, the Bracero Program kept going primarily because Big Agra liked that it could have cheap labor (they paid the Latino workers a fraction of what they paid whites). For example, Guillermo Bernal’s pay stub showed that while laboring in the fields for Arena Imperial Co. Growers and Shippers in Brawley, California, during the month of February, 1960, wherein he worked 112 hours, he was paid a total of $60.39. As Sworzyn (1946) notes, he was paid 50 cents an hour for his labor—or rather 1940s wages in the 1960s. The Latinos were basically being exploited as cheap labor—just like the U.S. barons of industry had exploited the Chinese for their cheap labor when laying the railroad tracks out west in the 19th century. As Mize and Swords (2011) put it, “Anglo growers used race as a line of division within class blocs to ensure themselves a steady and cheap supply of Mexican immigrant labor” (p. 30). It was the American way—when it came to the WASP approach to exploiting racial and ethnic minorities.
The U.S. even conducted Operation Wetback to round up Latinos and send them back to Mexico, often rounding up actual Latinos who were legally in the country and stranding them in the middle of the desert on the Mexican side of the border because some in the WASP ruling class objected to so many Latinos being in the Southwest. The whites felt threatened by the ethnic insurgence. Local area farmers did not want so many Latinos coming over illegally or legally—unless they were going to be working for them for next to nothing.
It was the same story when the U.S. Navy and Marines got into a riot with Latinos in L.A. in 1942. The U.S. Navy and Marines were ashore on leave and felt offended by the Latinos walking around in their Zoot Suits. The riot that broke out was evidence of the racial and ethnic divide between white America and everyone else. Mazon (1984) notes that “whether spurred by primitive Aztec rituals, Communists, Sinaquistas, or Anglos, the zoot-suiters were anathema. In late 1942, the zoot-suiters became the backdrop against which a changing array of actors were contrasted and brought into brief public prominence” (p. 28). In other words, the whites going off to fight for America did not like the idea of the Latinos strutting around in their suits in American streets acting like they owned the place or had a right to be there—which of course they did. It showed the extent to which U.S. relations with racial and ethnic communities was and would always be strained, particularly in the Southwest.
African Americans
U.S. relations with African Americans were not much better. Of course, Jim Crows were a major problem throughout the country well into the 20th century. Miscegenation laws were everywhere—not just in California, but also in Virginia, where the Lovings were persecuted for getting married. In the Southwest and California, it was particularly problematic. The African Americans in the Southwest experienced Jim Crow style oppression when they entered the military (perhaps inspired by the Capra film The Negro Soldier, which showed that blacks could make something of themselves if they joined the war effort): however, the reality was that when they put themselves in the hands of Uncle Sam, it all fell apart and many blacks sought to leave the military at the first opportunity.
Some settled in L.A. but only ended up getting beaten by the corrupt LAPD throughout the 20th century. There were numerous riots and notorious beatings of blacks by police. It was so bad in mid-century that Malcolm X went out there to rally the Nation of Islam against the LAPD and show that he would not let his people be abused by the hands and representatives of the law. It was an epic showdown in the streets of L.A. between Malcolm X and the white police of the LAPD—and in the end Malcolm X prevailed as he stood his ground and the Nation of Islam stood up behind him, obeying his every command and showing that they would fight back against police oppression and aggression.
The riots did not stop however. On into the latter half of the 20th century they continued. The Black Panthers were formed and they were targeted. The Rodney King beating in the 1990s sent much of L.A. over the edge, particularly when the white officers were acquitted of any wrongdoing. Rodney King even went on television begging everyone to settle down, pleading, “Can’t we all just get along? For the children?” It was a sad state of affairs that showed had bad things had become for a country that had sought to show so much promise in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act.
The relations between blacks and the U.S. have not really improved a great deal since then. Black Lives Matter was formed largely in response to the perception that blacks were being targeted by law enforcement agents and killed simply for being black. Hip hop artist Z-Ro released the song “No Justice No Peace” about blacks standing up to the police and resisting their oppression, using violence if necessary. It ushered in a new era of tension between the black community and the U.S.
However, that tension had been building for some time according to Angela Davis who noted that the prison industrial complex had been set up in the U.S. largely in order to contain African Americans and exploit them in a new slave system by using them for labor in the prison system. Many corporations today rely on prison labor for cheap labor in the manufacturing of their products, and it is in an open secret in the U.S. that this is done.
The problem as Davis has shown is that it does not help the relations between the U.S. and the African American community. Once blacks are entered into the penal system, it is difficult for them to have a normal life. They end up being recycled back into the system by the law and their communities suffer because such a significant percentage of the population is incarcerated.