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Chinese Americans
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For author and activist Helen Zia and many other Chinese Americans, the last three decades have been a time of political awakening inspired by the Civil Rights movement. They have forged a new Asian American identity, which was at first an alien notion to American descendents of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino immigrants. One landmark in the development of a pan-Asian identity was the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit. In the late 70s, pressure from Japanese automobile imports had forced massive layoffs in the American auto industry and gave rise to virulent anti-Japanese feelings. Celebrating his imminent marriage at a local bar, Chinese American Vincent Chin was mistaken for Japanese by two white Americans on the night of his bachelor party. They argued with him, followed him as he left the bar and beat Chin to death.
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Chinese Americans (Chinese language: 美籍華人 or 華裔美國人) are Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and are a subgroup of Asian Americans. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820 according to U.S. government records. Fewer than 1,000 arrived before the 1848 California Gold Rush which drew the first significant number of laborers from China who performed menial work for the gold prospectors. There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast. Most of the early immigrants were young males with low educational levels from the Guangdong province.[2] Chinese people were some of the early immigrants to live in the U.S. but then were banned from emigrating between 1885 and 1965 when the ban on Asian immigrants was lifted by the Immigration Reform and Control Act.
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Chinese Americans have a unique identity. They follow traditional Chinese customs at home, but they ... follow many American customs with friends at school. Many Chinese Americans struggle to find a balance between the two cultures by creating a special Chinese American culture that blends the two.
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Segregation of Chinese Americans began in the mining districts, where Chinese Americans were forced to live in the least desirable sections of towns. In Marysville, Yreka, and elsewhere, Chinese Americans could live only along the river, which was subject to flooding. In Mendocino, they could live only on the swampy headlands next to the ocean. In Fiddletown in Amador County, there was no undesirable section of town, so a natural boundary, a stream that ran across the main street, was used to divide the Chinese American from the White section of town. While some White businesses were allowed to locate in the Chinese section, no Chinese American homes or businesses were permitted in the White section of Fiddletown. [88]
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Chinese Americans faced similar barriers to voting. Three hundred thousand Chinese arrived in the U.S. between 1854 and 1882, drawn to the California gold rush and jobs in mining and railroad construction. Chinese immigrants quickly became targets for white workers, who blamed them for driving down wages. Riots against Chinese in California were commonplace in the 1870s and 80s. Pressure for action grew so great that the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first anti-immigrant act in U.S. history. The law ended Chinese immigration and prevented Chinese and later other Asian immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens... disfranchising that population.
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During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese Americans, like all overseas Chinese, generally speaking, were viewed as capitalist traitors by the People's Republic of China government. This attitude changed completely in the late 1970s with the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. Increasingly, Chinese Americans were seen as sources of business and technical expertise and capital who could aid in China's economic and other development.
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Chinese Americans