State Apologizes for Past Anti-Chinese Discrimination
My freedom withheld; how can I bear to talk about it?
--Anonymous
Barred from San Francisco in the early 1900s, a Chinese emigrant wrote that poem on the barrack walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station. He was being detained and interrogated because under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, no Chinese were allowed to enter the US except merchants, diplomats, students and children of American citizens.
If the Chinese poet got past the Exclusion Act and into the country, he'd find other racist laws preventing him from owning property and marrying whites.
California has now formally apologized to the poet and tens of thousands of other Chinese. The state legislature adopted a resolution expressing deep regret for the persecution of Chinese immigrants who worked the gold mines and were recruited to build the Transcontinental Railroad starting in the mid-1800s. Other ethnic groups resented the Chinese, who were willing to accept less pay, and the outrage led to anti-Chinese riots and the passage of the Exclusion Act.
About 175,000 Chinese, mostly male, were detained for an average of three weeks at Angel Island Immigration Station, which operated from 1910 until 1940. The majority was eventually allowed into San Francisco, about two miles away, but some Chinese were held on the island for months and even years. Many detainees wrote or carved their thoughts on the barrack walls, and thanks to a meticulous restoration effort, about 200 poems are legible. The barracks and other facilities, closed during the multi-year restoration, were reopened a few months ago for public tours.
Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-Cupertino), whose grandfather was held at Angel Island for two months, co-sponsored the California bill. He's taking it to the next level, proposing that Congress officially apologize for the Chinese Exclusion Act--the only federal law to prohibit immigration purely based on race.
Related: Chinese-American history
Comments
i’m glad that Pres. Obama has finally tried to correct the vast underrepresentation of Asian Am’s in high-visibility public posts with his Cabinet appointments of Steve Chu (Energy) and Gary Locke (Commerce) – both eminently qualified and slaying the myth that there just are not Asians/Chinese interested in these government posts.