America has a long history of discriminating against Asians, once banning Chinese people from becoming US citizens for 60 years
By: John Haltiwanger - Business Insider
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
America has a long history of discriminating against Asians, once banning Chinese people from becoming US citizens for 60 years
© Getty Images The first group of 82 Japanese-Americans arrive at the Manzanar internment camp (or 'War Relocation Center') carrying their belongings in suitcases and bags, Owens Valley, California, March 21, 1942. Getty Images
The US has seen a major rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and racism over the past year.
There's a long history of discrimination against Asians in the US.
Understanding this history could be crucial to combatting the rising tide of anti-Asian hate today.
The US has seen a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes over the past year, sparking calls for law enforcement and leaders in Washington to ramp up efforts to combat discrimination against the Asian community.
Congressional lawmakers met with prominent Asian Americans on Thursday as part of a hearing focused on the rising tide of anti-Asian discrimination nationwide, just two days after a series of shootings at three Atlanta-area massage parlors left eight people dead - including six Asian women.
Between March 2020 and late February 2021, there were roughly 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents reported across the US, with 68% coming from women, according to new data released by reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate. Women reported hate incidents 2.3 times more than men, the report said.
Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 150% in 2020 from the year prior, according to an analysis of hate crimes in 16 US cities recently released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino
The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled much of this anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. Many Republican leaders, including former President Donald Trump, have poured gasoline on the fire by insisting on calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus."
Though there's been a significant rise in discrimination against the Asian community in the past year, it's also nothing new. This brand of hatred is part of a long tradition in the US. Indeed, anti-Asian racism has played a major role in the American story.
In the 19th century, xenophobia and nativist sentiments drove the US to adopt what was effectively a whites-only immigration policy. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which barred Chinese workers from coming to the US and blocked Chinese nationals in the US from becoming citizens. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law in US history that explicitly prohibited immigration on the basis of race.
"Beginning in 1882, the United States stopped being a nation of immigrants that welcomed foreigners without restrictions, borders or gates," Erika Lee, a professor at the University of Minnesota, said in her book At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration During The Exclusion Era, 1882-1943. "In the process, the very definition of what it meant to be an 'American' became even more exclusionary." America became a "gatekeeping nation" with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Lee said.
The law remained in force for six decades before it was replaced by the Magnuson Act in 1943, which was still quite restrictive and only permitted a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants annually. Immigration law in the US would continue to discriminate against Asians in major ways until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national-origins quota system.
The Chinese Exclusion Act is just one example of the myriad forms of discrimination people of Asian descent have faced in the US. During World War II, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing over 100,000 people of Japanese descent into detention camps in the US.
The order was largely motivated by anti-Japanese sentiments after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans in the western US faced suspicion and rampant discrimination, even as many in the community served in the war - and in many cases were thrown into some of the most dangerous missions in Europe.
Of the people pushed into these internment camps during the war, roughly 80,000 were US citizens. The order also impacted some German and Italian Americans, but the vast majority of detainees were of Japanese descent.
The US government has made efforts to apologize for discriminatory actions against the Asian community, including the internment of Japanese Americans, but the hateful sentiments that contributed to these moves persist. Understanding this history could be crucial to thwarting the ongoing discrimination against Asians in the US.
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IMO the pandemic alone has not been the only cause of the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, it has been more than just the xenophobic hateful racist language used by Trump and other Republicans and conservatives (some here on NT), such as Wuhan virus, Chinese plague, China virus, Kung flu, etc, but also the multiple attacks on Chinese technology corporations, the closing of the Chinese Houston Consulate (without being able to find or claim ANY evidence of spying), disparaging the Confucious Institutes, limiting students from China, interfering with Chinese domestic affairs, encouraging protests and riots in Hong Kong, declaring China to be America's number one enemy, etc. Naturally hatred of Chinese people has been stirred up, and personally, I don't really believe that the murders in the Atlanta spas were hate crimes and I'm unhappy that they have been described as such because what that does is trivialize the fact of the actual increase in Asian hate crimes. However, it did seem to cause an impetus in bringing hate crimes against Asians to the fore.
Sadly, the hate is alive and well in 21st century America.
No it isn’t. Let’s be a little bit real about the situation in the United States in 2021. There are racist people, to be sure, just as there are anywhere. But no laws discriminate against Asians and the great bulk of people are not biased against Asians in any way.
Asians do very well, as a group, in this country. They have the highest rates of education and income of any ethnic group - more than whites - and the lowest incarceration rates (again, lower than whites). They are objectively the ethnic group that is the best well off in America.
Is that the reason for the great increase in the attacks and harrassment of them, Tacos!? I commend you for a nicely done sidestep.
I’m not wrong, or you would have said so.
I'm very real about the situation in the US. Of course, there are no laws that discriminate against Asians, but the racism that they face today isn't much different than what they have faced for decades.
Which has nothing to do with hate/racism shown toward to Asians in America.
LOL. Thanks for the conjecture. Since when am I obligated to agree or disagree with anything you dream up?
You have ample opportunity to dispute - with facts - anything you disagree with. The fact that you choose not to speaks volumes.
1. The fact that there are no laws that discriminate against Asans (at least not any more) is irrelevant to the hate crimes that are occurring, so that is nothing but a deflection on your part that it was a waste of my time to counter it.
2. I asked YOU a question, about your comment that Asians are the best well off group in America, whether that was the reason for the harrassment and attacks. You, of course did not answer it, yet you then criticize me for not responding to you. HYPOCRISY.
3. Then because I didn't waste my time replying to your trolling you declare yourself to be correct. You're lucky I haven't ticketed you yet.
4. Keep posting irrelevant bullshit and I damn well WILL delete your comments and ticket you. Read the RED RULES of this group.
It’s entirely relevant. Just read your own words that I just quoted. They are full of relevant information.
You start with the Chinese Exclusion Act - an act of government directed, racist discrimination. Then you go to attacks on Asians in 2021, which by your own words are now a crime. That is a massive shift in the situation. The only people discriminating against, or attacking Asians in America are criminals.
Which is true. Why won’t you acknowledge it?
I have no idea why an individual or even a group of Asians might be attacked. More importantly, neither do you. You might be able to count more assaults on Asians, but do you know why they were all attacked? And even more interesting: who was doing the attacking?
Derogatory remarks and threats are a poor argument. You don’t see me threatening you or name calling you. Why do it to me?
IMPASSE
The only group that hasn’t been discriminated against in the US are Anglo Saxon property owning males. If you are part of any other group then at some point that your ancestors were treated like shit in the US.
Lots of hatred in America to go around. So for the past few years your government has been trying its damndest to shift the hate to other countries.
Yup, there is a lot of racism and xenophobia in America’s past. In our defense, though, I don’t think that was particularly unique to the United States. Furthermore, the United States - more than most countries - has made a lot of progress in that area by holding itself to its own ideals.
Meanwhile, China is still one of the hardest places in the world for a foreigner to become a citizen, so don’t get too proud if you think there is a favorable comparison to be made. There isn’t.
Where did I make a favourable comparison? Your comment is a pipe dream. I have no desire whatsoever to become a Chinese citizen, I would NEVER give up my Canadian citizenship, and I sure as hell don't blame China for restricting citizenship. Anyway, the topic here is the history and continuation of racism in the USA.
(Deleted)
Oh that’s hilarious. But you blame the US? Ok then.
There is nothing continuous about the Chinese Exclusion Act and the state of affairs in the US today. It’s not a close comparison at all.
Personal Insult (Buzz of the Orient)
I never said it was continuous. I said the RACISM was continuous. Any more trolling with ridiculous ignorant comments and I'll ban you from posting on this group.