Chinese Exclusion Act Essay

In “Chinese Immigrant Lee Cew Denounces Prejudice in America, 1882”, we read the account of Chinese immigrant Lee Chew who, writing in 1882, finds himself discontented with the treatment he endures as an immigrant from China. Lee Chew’s experience was not unique; the Chinese immigration experience was one that was marked by discrimination and general exploitation. However, this pattern of discriminatory behavior was much more comprehensive than being directed at a specific race, and the Chinese experience is controvertible with the immigrant experience at large. Prejudice and discrimination in

The Chinese Experience records the history of the Chinese in the United States. The three-part documentary shows how the first arrivals from China, their descendants, and recent immigrants have “become American.” It is a story about identity and belonging that is relative to all Americans. The documentary is divided into three programs, each with a focus on a particular time in history. Program 1 describes the first arrivals from China, beginning in the early 1800’s and ending in 1882, the year Congress passed the first Chinese exclusion act. Program 2, which details the years of exclusion and the way they shaped and distorted Chinese American

Sui Sin Far’s short story, “In the Land of the Free” touches on the reality of being a Chinese immigrant in late-19th century America. The story revolves around a Chinese couple. The husband is ready for his wife, Lae Choo, to arrive from China with their new son, later named Kim. However, due to policies on immigration, the American government was forced to take possession of the child due to a lack of paperwork. However, Far’s short-story has a deeper meaning than just focusing on unfair immigration policies. She takes advantage of the story’s ending to symbolize a rejection of immigrant culture, most especially Chinese immigrant culture, by taking advantage of Kim’s change in behaviors, appearance, and dialect.

The purpose of the document was to convey a message of dismay towards the racism of United States specifically to the Chinese nationals. Also, the document intended to catch attention of the Americans for the discrimination against Chinese people.

The Chinese immigrants also contributed to us a whole new culture of which we had not been familiar with before. They brought their religious beliefs, prompting a Chinese Temple to be built in 1863 in Oroville, which provided a place of worship for Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism (Bancroft). They also brought their traditions, like the celebrations that they’d have for certain holidays like the Lunar New Year. These celebrations entailed festivals, parades, partying and all of the Chinese community coming together in the streets. Another one of the traditions they held dear to their culture was theatre, and so they continued these performances and even built their own Chinese theatre in 1852 (Bancroft). They

One of the first significant pieces of federal legislation aimed at restricting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from coming to America. Californians had agitated for the new law, blaming the Chinese, who were willing to work for less, for a decline in wages.The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation’s population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white “racial purity.”

The tale “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luch Wang depicts the story of three characters, Monkey, Jin, and Danny. They all have the problem of fitting into their new environments. Jin Wang has to deal with Asian stereotypes. Danny has to deal with embarrassment of his cousin. Lastly, Monkey has to deal with the fact that there is no position for him in the heavenly ranks. However, over time, these characters have to come together to fit in. Yet the question remains: what exactly about fitting in is the problem? Although Jin Wang takes the form of Danny to reject his Chinese roots, the embarrassment of Chin-Knee shows he cannot hide behind a false American identity, thereby delineating that race is the source of his problem.

According to the documents, describing the cruel actions of wicked men who intended nothing but hate towards the Chinese and racist comments that targeted specifically the Chinese depicts the idea that the Chinese Exclusion Act should have not been implemented in the United States in the year of 1882. The Chinese were strongly discriminated just like the African American people. To start on with (Document A) about a play divided in four parts called “The Chinese Must Go” by Henry Grimm in 1879, shows of the stereotypes about the Chinese. This document is nothing else but mimicking or impersonating how the Chinese tend to speak English in America. Their English maybe be taken as broken English, another way to describe someone’s struggle to speak

Chinese Exclusion Act was a law that passed by Congress on May 6 of 1882, that halted the immigration of the Chinese laborers for a span of 10 years and denied neutralization to the existing Chinese in the United States. Following an economic crisis in the late 19th century that left many without jobs and slowed down the expansion of the Western States, many Chinese immigrants laborers were blamed for the falling of wages and lack of employment opportunities. The Chinese laborer faced violence, social isolation, and discriminatory laws that was included in the passage of the exclusion act. Although the act had little effect on the U.S’s economy beyond the Chinese community, it set a lasting effect for immigration policy, it was the first U.S law the refusal to admit members of a specific ethnic group or nationality. Since Chinese immigration was helping the U.S’s economy bloom. Why the sudden stop of only one ethnic group coming to the U.S? What social, economic, and political caused the Chinese Exclusion Act?

The whites showed their distaste towards the Chinese in many ways; making them objects of violence and riots. As seen in the illistration of the Anti-Chinese Riot in Denver, Colorado, the white men are fighting with the Chinese and damaging their own property (DOC 4). This shows the loathing the Americans felt towards the foreigners and what these people had to go through. As Lee Chew wrote in his passage, "All Congressmen ackknowledge the injustice of the treatment of any people, yet they continue it" (DOC 5). This proves that the government knew what was happening to these people, but still refused to do anything to help

It is crucial to recognize the huge toll the Chinese Exclusion Act took on Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, and the negative influence of racialization it had on immigration policy of other countries. In this paper, I will discuss the consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act on Chinese culture and society in the United States, regarding to the isolation of Chinese society in U.S., paper identities and lives of illegal Chinese immigrants and how this Act guided the establishment

The growth of Chinese jobs in the California labor market did not stop there. Because of the hard times, employers found it especially attractive that the Chinese workers would work for long hours with low pay. Huge losses hit California in 1876 with a drought; this led to unemployment across the coast including for the Chinese. Many white investors, however, used the Chinese as scapegoats for this statewide depression, fueling the anti-Chinese fire and leading to more hostility towards Chinese workers. The firsthand account of Lee Chew, a Chinese immigrant to America in the early 1880s, shows the disparities between the white man’s perception of Chinese laborers and reality as well as the hostility that arose as a result. When Lee first arrived in America, he started working as a housekeeper for a family in California, being paid $3.50 a week and being able to keep 50 cents afterwards. For Lee and other Chinese immigrants, they believed the hostility arose from jealousy in the labor market, “because he [Chinese worker] is a more faithful worker than one of their people, [and they] have raised such a great outcry about Chinese cheap labor that they have shut him [Chinese worker] out of working on farms or in factories or building railroads or making streets or digging sewers.” Lee’s testimony shows the common ripple effects of the working restrictions white men imposed on the Chinese immigrants looking for jobs. This resulted in Chinese

Frank Chin has been the most vocal critic of Kingston's who accused her "of reinforcing white fantasies about Chinese Americans" (Chin, 1991) and claimed that writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang who won approval of the American white readers deliberately distorted the image of Chinese American to reinforce stereotypes and cater to the fantasies of American readers about a traditionalist Chinese culture. (Frank Chin, 1991, pp. 3-29)

For this week’s PSD-A, I decided to analyze the lengthy article published in 1898 (sixteen years after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed) by J. Thomas Scharf, a former United States Chinese inspector at a port in New York. I wanted to see the difference between the immigration of the Chinese in the late 1800s versus immigration in the late 1900s (about the time my parents came to America). Overall, this opinion essay was a bit offensive to me, but I did learn a lot from it, which is always a great thing ;).

Mark Twain and Maxine Hong Kingston are both influential writers when it comes to the history of the Chinese Immigrants. Bother of them showed a great amount of detail on their journey to America. Mark Twain actually pities the “friendless Mongol,” there were many superficial stereotypes of the Chinese immigrants (Ou 33). Twain ridicules the American’s racist attitudes against the Chinese. For example, in Roughing It, he wrote,