Chinese Exclusion in the Past and Present: Chinese Immigration and the Process of "Othering"

In 1882, the United States Congress passed the first federal immigration law to bar immigrants of a particular nationality. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a landmark piece of legislation that stemmed from anti-Chinese sentiment. Proponents of the act made such statements as

"If we continue to permit the introduction of this strange people, with their peculiar civilization, until they form a considerable part of our population, what is to be the effect upon the American people and Anglo-Saxon civilization? Can they meet half way, and so merge in a mongrel race, half Chinese and half Caucasian, as to produce a civilization half pagan, half Christian, semi-oriental, altogether mixed and very bad?"

-Senator John Franklin Miller (13 Cong. Rec. 28 Feb. 1882)

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the anti-Chinese sentiment that it supported, fostered an environment of Chinese discrimination. However, it wasn't until over a century later that monuments memorializing this discrimination came into fruition. Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion, an exhibit established in 2014 at the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, focuses on the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impacts on Chinese immigration and Chinese immigrants already residing within the United States. This trend of memorials commemorating certain discriminatory events long after the fact is not limited to Chinese Americans - one need only to look at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a 2018 memorial dedicated to lynching victims. What has triggered this recent development of the construction of memorials, and how does this relate to othering? The answer has to do with collective memory, a term coined by Maurice Halbwachs. Collective memory is briefly defined as the memory held by a society, often significantly influenced by that society's identity. Recently, society has shifted towards the belief that memorials are important in collective memory, especially the memory of distressing events such as discriminatory or racist practices. However, the memorializing of discriminatory events, while important for the development of collective memory, discreetly "others" specific groups. The memorials themselves focus on how groups have been "othered" by society. The focus of Chinese Americans on detailing how American society has "othered" Chinese immigrants in the past is itself another form of "othering." The construction of memorials provides a geographical basis for the further separation of Chinese Americans from American society, a point that is further elaborated by the expanding development of Chinatowns. 

The "othering" of Chinese immigrants has changed over time. In the early history of the United States, the federal government "othered" Chinese immigrants by specifically barring their immigration to the United States. Now, Chinese immigrants "other" themselves, though not on purpose, through the development of separate physical spaces to retain their own identity. Even though discrimination against Chinese immigrants is not as severe as it was in the past, the existence of separate physical spaces for Chinese immigrants still leads to some forms of discrimination. In fact, Shimpi argues that discrimination against Chinese immigrants has not changed much over time:

In this manuscript, we examine the single case of Chinese American immigration in the United States over a 150-year period to explore how conversations and debates about immigration and immigrants have changed over time. We find remarkably little change in the valence of these conversations (see also Mullen, 2001) or in the precise content of the depictions of Chinese Americans over time. A detailed analysis of depictions and conversations about Chinese Americans in a variety of contexts reveals that European Americans often describe them as: (1) self-segregating, (2) lacking loyalty to the United States, and (3) hardworking and successful, but simultaneously lacking in “humanity" (Mariana Shimpi).

​My argument focuses mainly on self-segregation, a point that Shimpi stresses as an aspect of Chinese-American culture that is influenced by both Chinese immigrants and Americans:

Accusations of self-segregation often co-occurred with the 19th and early 20th century beliefs, laws, and larger social practices which excluded Chinese from European American social, political, educational, and economic institutions. Chinese were described as “distinct, separate, segregated, in all things alien to the United States as would be the inhabitants of another world” (Whitney, 1988, p. 135). As a result of these attitudes, they were driven to live, work, and attend schools among themselves, rather than being able to spread out and assimilate within the dominant culture (Lee, 2007; Wing, 2007).

How do Chinese Americans want to be remembered in society? Increasingly, the answer seems to lean towards the 'Chinese' part rather than the 'American' part. However, it's important to remember that the self-segregation of Chinese-Americans from the rest of American society was preceded by segregation of Chinese-Americans from the rest of American society by American society itself. Once American society made their discrimination against Chinese-Americans clear, Chinese-Americans began to look inward and separate themselves from American society. The only way to remember their own culture and history was to retreat inward, forge their own histories, and tip the scales towards their 'Chinese' identity rather than their 'American' identity. Memorials and separate physical spaces meant for immigrant communities are important to preserve culture and history, but they also "other" communities. It's an unavoidable aspect of being an immigrant, and a constant balancing act of the identities on either side of the hyphen.