How We’ve Gotten Here
As we celebrate Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, it’s important to look at how our society has gotten to where it’s at today.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law on May 6, 1882, and it suspended immigration of Chinese skilled and unskilled laborers for ten years and prevented Chinese immigrants from becoming United States citizens. The California Gold Rush and the building of railroads in the American west drew thousands of Chinese workers to the United States and many American citizens blamed those immigrants for low wages and lack of jobs. The Geary Act of 1892 extended the ban on Chinese immigration an additional ten years and required the immigrants to carry “certificates of residence.”
Chinese immigrants began to argue and fight for their rights. Lee Yick, a Chinese laundry worker, won a Supreme Court Case, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, on May 10, 1886. The case said that all people, citizens and non-citizens, had equal protection under the law. After being jailed for not paying a $10 laundry permit fine, Yick and another launderer, Wo Lee, sued stating that their constitutional rights had been violated because of the unfair and biased administration of the law requiring laundry permits. The court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was violated.
From the 1960s and ‘70s the Asian American civil rights movement sought an end to the Vietnam War, for the development of university and college ethnic studies programs, and for monetary reparations for Japanese Americans forced to live in the World War II internment camps. The Asian American community began to recognize that they were also victims of institutional racism as were the Black American community. Proclamation 4417 was signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976. The proclamation declared internment camps a “national mistake.” The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan, apologized for the internment camps and provided $20,000 to surviving internees or their heirs.
President Barack Obama signed legislation, H.R. 4238, replacing the words “Oriental” and “Negro” with “Asian American” and “African American” in U.S. code. Written in the late 1970s, U.S. code attempted to define minorities and this replaced those antiquated words with more culturally sensitive words.
COVID-19 has brought unfair targets to our Asian American residents. People are taking their frustrations and lack of education about the virus out on them, and Asian Americans are feeling a new level of harassment, violence, and hate. Stop AAPI Hate by reporting hate incidents.
Sources:
The Chinese Exclusion Act
Office of the Historian, Department of State, United States of America
The Zinn Education Project
History of the Asian American Civil Rights Movement
“Congress sends bill eliminating ‘Oriental’ and ‘Negro’ from law to Obama”, by Cristina Marcos