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The Chinese Must Go

Page 6

by Beth Lew-Williams

coolie was a pliable instrument of the monopolists and a dominating

  presence in his own right.

  If the Chinese were not coolies, were they inassimilable heathens? Cer-

  tainly, arriving at Amer ica’s shores, the Chinese were distinct from American

  citizens. They looked diff er ent (especially with their hair in long braided

  queues), spoke an unfamiliar language, knew little of Judeo- Christian be-

  liefs, wore loose tunics instead of button-up shirts, and preferred pork and

  rice to beef and potatoes. But it was racial assumptions that made these

  cultural differences seem insurmountable. Native Americans and recent Eu-

  ro pean mi grants also possessed distinct cultural norms, but many white

  Americans in the late- nineteenth- century West trusted that these groups

  could be enfolded into the nation.66 The ubiquitous belief in Chinese racial

  difference, and discriminatory laws and practices that followed from that

  belief, made Chinese amalgamation difficult, but not impossible. The longer

  Chinese mi grants lived in the U.S. West, the more they adapted to Amer-

  ican customs, developed En glish language skills, and formed social bonds

  within the white community.

  Though anti- Chinese advocates emphasized their spatial and cultural dis-

  tance from the Chinese, archeological studies and textual accounts make

  clear that these groups were not so neatly divided. Social relations of pro-

  THE CHINESE QUESTION

  37

  “What Shall We Do with Our Boys?” In this 1882 po liti cal cartoon by George Keller,

  the Chinese coolie takes all available jobs while white juveniles stand idle. The Wasp,

  F850.W18, vol. 8, no. 292: 136–137. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of

  California, Berkeley.

  duction in the U.S. West necessitated contact between white people and the

  Chinese. With the Chinese working in the sixty- three industries listed by

  the Trades Assembly, they could not help but interact with white coworkers,

  employers, and customers on a daily basis. Chinese men bought steaks from

  white butchers and joined white congregations. White women picked up

  their clothes from Chinese laundries, purchased produce from Chinese veg-

  etable peddlers, and sought remedies from Chinese apothecaries. White men

  employed Chinese servants to watch their children, dress their wives, and

  manage their house holds. A few Chinese mi grants found their way onto In-

  dian reservations in the West or into black communities in the Deep South,

  selling goods and alcohol, or becoming husbands and fathers. This frequent

  contact across the color line did not prevent anti- Chinese advocates from

  believing that the “Chinaman” fell outside their imagined American com-

  munity. To do so, however, meant unseeing social real ity.67

  Even that icon of Chinese spatial and cultural ghettoization, “China-

  town,” was not a racially bounded space in the 1860s and 1870s. Previous

  38 RESTRICTION

  scholars have noted that missionary work, white slumming, and occasional

  interracial liaisons existed within segregated Chinatowns.68 In fact, interra-

  cial contact within Chinatowns was a much wider phenomenon. In small

  Californian towns like Riverside, Eureka, Auburn, or Placerville, Chinatown

  was simply a few Chinese- occupied buildings surrounded by a white-

  dominated downtown. In urban centers like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or

  Seattle, Chinatown was a more distinct and segregated district, but this did

  not preclude all spatial integration. In Seattle, the 1880 census recorded two

  hundred Chinese living in forty- nine distinct house holds. Census takers

  noted sixteen mixed- race house holds, nine of which consisted of Chinese

  domestics living in white family homes, while the remainder were mixed-

  race boarding houses. Most Chinese in Seattle lived in racially segregated

  house holds, but 84 percent of the Chinese population lived next to non-

  Chinese neighbors.69 In all of Washington Territory, 81 percent of Chinese-

  headed house holds could be found next door to a non- Chinese- headed

  house hold in 1880. The rate of spatial integration was lower but still sizable

  in Oregon and California, with 71 percent and 58 percent of Chinese- headed

  house holds living alongside non- Chinese neighbors, respectively.

  The same could not be said of San Francisco, where there was an unmis-

  takable Chinese enclave occupying a twelve- block area in the city. In 1880,

  segregation in San Francisco County was staggering, with only 14 percent

  of Chinese- headed house holds living alongside a non- Chinese- headed

  house hold.70 And yet, even in segregated San Francisco, a Wells Fargo

  Directory reveals that Chinese businesses spilled outside of Chinatown. The

  vast majority of Chinese in San Francisco lived within a racial ghetto, but

  many traveled outside to conduct business.71

  It is vital to recognize the degree to which Chinese were interwoven into

  the multiracial fabric of the U.S. West: spatially, eco nom ically, and socially.

  When anti- Chinese advocates depicted the Chinese as segregated aliens, they

  were attempting to erase interracial encounters necessitated by daily life. No

  doubt it was the frightening familiarity of the Chinese, and not just their

  heathen reputation, that drove racial anx i eties. While advocates were la-

  menting the heathens’ incapacity to Americanize, they also warned that the

  Chinese would infiltrate white society and pollute the white race. This

  imagined conquest provides the climax for Dooner’s Last Days of the Republic,

  which predicts a day in the future when “[t]he Mongolian ha[s] proved him-

  THE CHINESE QUESTION

  39

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  San Francisco Chinatown and Chinese Businesses (1882). Although contemporaries

  described “Chinatown” as a twelve- block segregated space, the Wel s Fargo Directory of

  Principal Chinese Business Firms (San Francisco, 1882) lists Chinese businesses in many other areas of the city.

  self a soldier, a statesman, a politician, a phi los o pher and a laborer.” As

  Chinese penetrate all realms of American society, he imagines profound con-

  sequences: the elite Chinese are “recognized in the brotherhood of men,”

  “intermarry with the daughters of Amer ica,” and enter “the society of their

  white fellow- citizens.”72

  This calamity is pictured in one of the novel’s illustrations, titled “The

  Governor of California.” The Chinese- born governor, still decked in all the

  40 RESTRICTION

  trappings of the barbaric Orient, occupies a room filled with symbols of oc-

  cidental civilization. Despite his new seat of power in Amer ica, the governor

  is unchanged, no more assimilated than his alien countrymen, but now he

  sits tantalizingly close to a marble corbel in the shape of a nude white woman.

  The heathen may not have been capable of self- government, but Dooner still

  feared that he was cunning enough to wrest the United States, and its white

  women, from the grasp of American men.

  Much of the terror the heathen coolie provoked arose from his contra-

  dictory nature, his imagined ability to be what he was not. He appeared emi-

  nently stupid yet a keen trickster, slavishly obedient yet dominating at the

  workplace, inferior in all matters of morality and learning yet superior in

  his will to survive and succeed.73 When it came to the Chinese, Americans

  did not have complete confidence in white supremacy, especially within the

  newly acquired U.S. West. White citize
ns feared the Chinese would not

  easily be exterminated, assimilated, or subordinated, as were the “vanishing”

  Indians, “conquered” Hispanics, or “enslaved” Africans of the past.74 “If we

  throw wide our doors and invite these Asiatic people to a full, free equal com-

  petition with us for supremacy,” warned anti- Chinese agitators, “we shall

  get worsted.”75 Because Chinese could emerge victorious from a war of the

  races, white Americans had to avoid entering such a contest in the first place.

  For this reason, anti- Chinese advocates believed that this alien menace could

  only be stopped through exclusion.

  In the 1860s and 1870s, an unwieldy grassroots anti- Chinese movement

  coalesced around the call for exclusion. As it spun along the West Coast,

  the movement pulled into its orbit the vast majority of white workers and

  small business owners. In California, the una nim ity of opinion was stag-

  gering: on an 1879 ballot, 99 percent of California voters declared they were

  “against Chinese immigration.”76 Tens of thousands of white Californians

  joined anti- Chinese rallies in San Francisco’s unoccupied sandlots and in

  public meeting houses up and down the state. One of the most vis ible anti-

  Chinese groups to emerge was the Workingmen’s Party of California, and

  one of the most colorful anti- Chinese spokesmen was its leader, Dennis

  Kearney.

  Born in Ireland, Kearney worked at sea until he arrived in San Francisco

  in 1868 at age twenty- one. After working for a steamship com pany, he opened

  his own business as a drayman, hauling heavy carts across town. In the

  “The Governor of California” imagines a dystopian future in which an unassimi-

  lated Chinese immigrant has been elected to high office. Illustration by G. F. Keller

  from P. W. (Pierton W.) Dooner’s Last Days of the Republic (San Francisco: Alta

  California Publishing House, 1880). Image reproduction courtesy of Glenn R.

  Negley Collection of Utopian Lit er a ture, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book &

  Manuscript Library, Duke University Libraries, Utopia D691L.

  42 RESTRICTION

  summer of 1877, during a national economic downturn, workingmen across

  Amer ica struck for higher wages and better conditions. What started as a

  railroad strike in Virginia spread to coal miners in the rural Midwest, meat-

  packers in Chicago, and blue- collar workers in St. Louis. The sympathy strike

  in San Francisco quickly turned into a race riot targeting the Chinese. From

  these violent beginnings, the Workingmen’s Party of California emerged.

  Californians thronged to Kearney and the party to hear his message of

  white working- class solidarity. Kearney was not a towering presence or a re-

  fined speaker; he was “compactly and solidly built,” and his diatribes were

  punctuated by curses and grammatical mistakes. But he had charisma.

  “Drive all the Chinamen out of San Francisco and hang all the thieves and

  politicians,” he told an angry crowd in San Francisco in 1877. “The monopo-

  lists who have made money by employing cheap labor had better look

  out. They have built themselves fine residences on Nob Hill, have erected

  flagstaffs upon their roofs. Let them take care that they have not erected their

  own gallows.”77 Kearney’s epithets against the Chinese rarely received re-

 

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