The Making of Asian America: A History

“In contemporary America, Asian Americans occupy unique and constantly shifting positions between black and white, foreign and American, privilege and poverty.”

When Asian Americans are classified as a group based on race, they are often compared to other groups in the US. Since the 1960s, they have been portrayed as “model minorities” and, more recently, as competitors to whites in academia and in high-earning workplaces. At the same time, they have been contrasted with other groups, such as African and Latin Americans, by using the language of “culture,” which the author views as a new form of racism.

“In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Manila became a center of transpacific slave trading. Facilitated by the Manila galleon trade, Asians constituted another pool of slave labor in New Spain, albeit much smaller than the African population. Colonial merchants, priests, and military and civil officials involved in the trade all profited handsomely.”

Asian immigration to South America and the Caribbean predated the North American counterpart. It occurred within the context of Spanish, then British, colonialism. Enslaved laborers and, later, indentured laborers, were moved from one part of the respective European empires to another where their work was required. The workers’ journeys were dangerous, while working and living conditions were terrible. The author shows the way in which European colonialism and imperialism framed and facilitated this first wave of Asian immigration.

“The stereotype of Asian workers as coolies, cheap workers who drive down wages, take away jobs, and are servile pawns of factory owners and greedy capitalists, has a long history. Although the nineteenth-century migration of indentured Asian labor to the Americas was a Latin American phenomenon, the coolie label was effectively used to fuel violent anti-Asian movements in the United States that resulted in widespread discrimination.”

Coolies were indentured laborers who were free in name only. In the 19th century, they moved from one part of the British Empire to another to fill the labor gaps. Eventually, the Europeans shut down this system after decades of strikes and protests by the laborers themselves. Even though the coolies had little to do with North America, their image was used in racist propaganda to drive anti-Asian sentiment and policies—rather than questioning the system of unbridled capitalism and imperialism that created the coolie in the first place.

“By the 1860s, the Chinese coolie system prompted a global debate over race and labor that would shape Chinese immigration to the United States. On the one hand, Chinese indentured laborers were seen as a necessary cure for the labor shortages that plagued industrializing settler societies after the end of slavery. Chinese laborers were cheap, easily available and exploitable, and their labor made it possible for plantation economies to prosper.”

The coolie indentured laborers worked primarily within the British Empire. Despite this fact, their impact was global since they highlighted the relationship between capitalism, labor, and immigration. However, in the 19th century, this debate was less interested in labor rights and safety and more with profiting industries within the framework of unbridled capitalism. One reason for the lack of concern for coolies’ rights was the fact that they were of a different race. The coolie, in part, shaped the perception of the Chinese in the Americas for decades to come.

“Meanwhile, the United States continued its imperialist expansion westward through a war with Mexico and further dispossession of Native Americans. Industrialization and the growth of American capitalism created an insatiable desire for labor in the United States. Large numbers of workers were especially needed in western states to tap natural resources and build a transportation infrastructure.”

The relationship between US imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and immigration is an important trajectory in this book. As the US acquired new territories across the North American landmass, it also required a larger labor force that the local population was not always able to fulfill. As a result, immigration into the US was driven both by its labor requirements and by the socioeconomic conditions in the respective countries of origin of the arriving immigrants. In the early 20th century, there was an overlap between the two, as was the case with the newly acquired American colony of the Philippines and Filipino immigration into the United States.

“The Chinese who entered the United States in the late nineteenth century were only a small fraction of the total immigrant population in the United States. From 1870 to 1880, 138,941 Chinese immigrants entered the country, representing only 4.3% of the total number of immigrants (3,199,394) who were admitted during the same decade. Nevertheless, their presence in the United States sparked some of the most violent and destructive racist campaigns in US history that would transform the United States and shape the regulation of international migration around the world.”

Even though the Chinese comprised a small fraction of the overall immigration wave coming into the United States in the late 19th century, their poor treatment highlights the way it was largely motivated by racist views. Many nativist Americans adhered to a strict racial hierarchy, in which Anglo-Saxon Protestants were at the top, and other Europeans, such as the Catholic Irish and Italians, as well as the Slavs, were lower. In this outdated framework, the non-European Chinese were even lower and were thus treated with prejudice and sometimes physical violence. Their experience highlights the struggles that Asian Americans faced at that time beyond the Exclusion laws.

“On October 24, 1871, seventeen Chinese were lynched in Los Angeles after a policeman was shot by a Chinese suspect. A mob of nearly 500, which represented nearly a tenth of the population of Los Angeles at the time, went on the attack and dragged Chinese out of their homes while others hastily built gallows downtown to hang the victims. Police did little as a broad cross section of Angelenos, including women and children, assisted the mob in what would become the largest mass lynching in US history.”

Asian Americans faced similar types of societal and legal discrimination and race-based violence as the other groups of non-European descent. This example shows the way in which the authorities, in some cases, aided and abetted the mob persecuting Chinese Americans against the historical backdrop leading up to the Chinese Exclusion laws.

“Japanese women’s labor was essential to the survival of their families. They worked alongside their husbands in the fields and shops, or as domestic servants in private homes, and in laundries or other small businesses.”

Sex and gender are important criteria for examining the Asian immigrant experience in the United States. In the late 19th to early 20th century, Asian American women were in the minority compared to their male counterparts. Sometimes they were imported as the so-called picture brides with the help of a matchmaking service. In the US, they usually faced a difficult life of labor while also performing the domestic duties expected of them in patriarchal societies.

“On October 14, 1914, Ozawa filed an application for citizenship but was denied. He challenged the ruling in the US District Court for the Territory of Hawai’i two years later. He was denied again. The court found that Ozawa was ‘in every way eminently qualified under the statutes to become an American citizen,’ except for his race. He was not white as the country’s naturalization laws required.”

First-generation Japanese Americans were banned from naturalizing as American citizens solely based on race, even if they met all other criteria. Some Japanese people, such as Takao Ozawa, challenged this law repeatedly. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled against him. Ozawa v. United States is an important example of Asian Americans fighting for civil rights in the United States.

“Picture brides also faced another harsh reality. Because their husbands were often so much older than they were, there was a very real possibility that they would need to work even harder to support their families when their husbands became infirm. Or worse yet, they could become widows at a very young age. “

The role of sex/gender in Asian American immigration is one of the key themes in this book. For decades, labor immigration was primarily male. Since Asian American men could not marry locals for many reasons, such as anti-miscegenation laws, they were forced to import young women from their home countries solely based on matchmakers’ services and each other’s photographs. In many cases, their photographs were touched up and their socioeconomic status in North America was exaggerated. Female Asian immigrants who arrived in this way faced the reality of having to work alongside their husbands and take care of their household duties and children. The difference between the male and female immigrant experience at this time provides an additional dimension to understanding Asian immigrant lives in general.

“Like many Asian immigrants, Koreans retained strong ties to their homeland. But because of the colonized status of Korea, their homeland ties took on a fierce nationalism that focused on Korean independence.”

In many ways, the Korean American immigrant experience was similar to that of the Chinese and Japanese. They faced similar struggles, discrimination, and socioeconomic problems. At the same time, the one key difference was the fact that Korea was Japan’s colony between 1910 and 1945, which shaped Korean lives. Koreans were Japanese subjects—in many cases against their will. As a result, their immigrant experience was focused on seeking independence. In practical terms, some Korean Americans were stateless: They could not return to Korea or obtain citizenship in North America. They were also initially classified as “enemy aliens,” like the Japanese, during World War II, which enraged them.

“While South Asians viewed their struggles in North America as part of a global struggle for freedom in India, white Americans and Canadians viewed them as just another Asian immigration problem. South Asians were simply added to the list of despised ‘Asiatics’ like Chinese and Japanese, and the arguments for their exclusion grew louder.”

The experience of South Asians in North America, especially Canada, shows the extent to which their exclusion was based on race. For example, as British subjects, immigrants from present-day India should have had unrestricted access to other parts of the British Empire, such as Canada. However, the Canadian government, in part inspired by popular anti-immigrant, nativist sentiment, tried to prevent South Asian arrivals in curious ways, such as the Continuous Journey law in the early 1900s. Thus, South Asians were British subjects in name only. Such experiences only strengthened the desire for independence for some South Asians. For modern-day India and Pakistan, independence occurred only after World War II.

“With the colonization of the Philippines came the need to incorporate Filipinos into the United States in some way. Citizenship was out of the question. Filipinos were described in racial terms as uncivilized savages, brutal rapists, and even dogs and monkeys. At best, they were characterized as children in need of (U.S.) guidance.”

The Filipinos went from being Spanish colonial subjects to those of the United States after the Spanish-American War (1898). But their lives did not immediately improve from this transformation. First, the American purchase of the Philippines from Spain led to a prolonged and bloody conflict, in which the Americans acted as the colonial masters suppressing popular local unrest. Second, the Filipinos were perceived as savages at worst, and paternalistically as children incapable of governing themselves at best. Nor did their status as US Nationals translate into full citizenship rights. It did, however, make it easier for them to immigrate to the United States in comparison to other Asian groups.

“Undocumented Asian immigration was a big business. The disconnect between national immigration policies that restricted immigrants on the one hand and national and global economies that still depended upon immigrant labor on the other created a lucrative underground business dealing in the dreams of desperate immigrants.”

The age of Asian Exclusion in the late 19th to early 20th centuries led to the rise of undocumented immigration. This migration relied on a sophisticated network and was financially lucrative. It was also dangerous for the undocumented immigrants. The reason for the success of this “business” was the fact that the American and Canadian immigration laws did not match the labor requirements in several industries. Indeed, the real business needs contradicted the racist stereotype of Asian laborers taking jobs away from white Americans and Canadians. This underground network also shows the hardships that Asian immigrants experienced in search of a better life after fleeing their home countries for socioeconomic reasons.

“There was, to be sure, evidence that the Japanese government had successfully placed spies through its consulates in the United States. There were also nineteen Americans who were arrested during World War II for serving as agents of Japan. All were white.”

Japanese Americans faced collective punishment during World War II. The fact that they were not a threat to US national security was not only shown by intelligence reports but also by the fact that none of those arrested for collaborating with Japan in the US were of Japanese descent. The accused agents of Japan being white only underscores the race-based collective punishment that Japanese Americans faced at the hands of their own country.

“On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. While irresponsible journalism, West Coast pressure groups, and US military officials all played key roles leading up to the United States’ decision to forcibly remove and incarcerate West Coast Japanese, the ultimate responsibility for violating the civil rights of Japanese Americans rests with President Roosevelt. In doing so, he ignored reports from the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and his own handpicked investigators who reported that mass removal or incarceration was unnecessary.”

Executive Order 9066 led to the forced removal from the Pacific Coast of Japanese Americans and their imprisonment. Most of them were citizens. First, Roosevelt and his supporters portrayed it as a “military necessity,” even though the President received overwhelming evidence that, as a group, Japanese Americans were no threat to the national security of the United States. Second, the author shows the behind-the-scenes in-fighting about the implementation of this order until the dissenters in government removed their opposition. Third, this group trauma exemplifies the nadir of the Asian American immigrant experience. Fourth, the mass incarceration of the Japanese reflects other, albeit more extreme, examples, including the Nazi German race-based concentration camps or the Soviet labor camps, which, at times, housed “class enemies.”

“For issei, the choice was even more heart-wrenching. Question 28 asked them to renounce their Japanese nationality even though they were barred by law from becoming US citizens. Many believed that if they answered ‘yes’ to this question, they would become stateless. However, if they answered ‘no,’ they might be forcibly separated from their families or targeted for further government reprisal.”

During World War II, an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the so-called exclusion zones per Executive Order 9066 and imprisoned in concentration camps for the duration of the war. Approximately, one third of them were first-generation immigrants (issei) unable to apply for citizenship due to racial exclusion in immigration law. Filling out a government questionnaire in the camps was difficult. Issei Japanese Americans were afraid that declaring loyalty to the US would, in theory, make them lose their Japanese citizenship, leaving them stateless. On the other hand, being declared disloyal led to serious negative consequences and further incarceration. Their terrible dilemma shows the way race-based group punishment affected ordinary people during the war.

“Thus, when China became communist in 1949 and then entered the Korean War in 1950, Chinese Americans’ newfound status as patriotic Americans became vulnerable. An anticommunist campaign led by US government officials sought to expose Chinese who were allegedly communist spies in the United States. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, for example, connected communist China, the US’s ‘No. 1 enemy,’ with Chinese Americans in the United States, ‘some of whom could be susceptible to recruitment either through ethnic ties or hostage situations because of relatives in Communist China,’ he claimed.”

Regardless of how many generations ago Asian Americans arrived in the United States, their experience was usually linked to the relationship between the United States and their ancestral homeland. During World War II, they were rehabilitated as American Allies and portrayed positively by politicians and the media. However, after the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the ideological changes that China underwent turned it into an American rival. As a result, Chinese Americans once again faced scrutiny. In this sense, Asian Americans were—and continue to be—perceived on a racial and cultural basis—even if they perceive themselves to be fully American.

“Out of the 1960s a new Asian America was formed. First came the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which liberalized the nation’s immigration policy and ushered in new generations of immigrants from throughout Asia, many of whom had no connection to pre–World War II communities. Over the past fifty years, Asian American communities have grown exponentially, and, with the additional arrival of refugees from Southeast Asia, have become increasingly diverse and transnational. The second major change was the widespread involvement of Asian Americans in a number of campaigns for civil rights.”

Much like the legal Asian Exclusion of 1882 and 1924 was a watershed moment for Asian Americans in the negative sense, so was 1965 in the positive sense. In the previous decade, first-generation Asian Americans, such as the Japanese, were allowed to naturalize as US citizens after decades of institutional discrimination and exclusion. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act created the legal framework for more liberal immigration policies as the Civil Rights movement gradually changed social and cultural perceptions regarding race and sex/gender. The result of such political and legal liberalization in the US was a more diverse group of Asian immigrants, including refugees, with greater opportunities compared to the exclusion period.

“The U.S.’s aggressive anticommunist foreign policy led it to Southeast Asia at the end of World War II. By the 1950s, it had replaced France as the major Western power in the region and was engaged in a full-blown war with North Vietnamese communist forces and their allies in South Vietnam by the 1960s […] As US interventionism spread to neighboring Laos and Cambodia, these countries and peoples were also caught up in similar aftereffects of war.”

The United States arose as a superpower out of World War II. The Americans pursued a global foreign policy of containment of their ideological rival, the Soviet Union, all around the world. From the American perspective, containment was reasonably successful in Europe but a failure in Southeast Asia, especially during the Vietnam War (1955-1975). For instance, American aggression in the region led to a tremendous civilian death toll in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Indeed, it was the American involvement in a local conflict brought on by decolonization half the world away from the US mainland that created such large numbers of refugees fleeing to America from American bombs.

“Hmong American politics has also emphasized the Hmong peoples’ distinctive history as US allies during the Vietnam War. Veterans tell and retell the story of how Hmong fought for the United States in its struggle against communism in order to portray themselves as ‘loyal Americans before they even set foot on American soil,’ according to historian Chia Vang.”

Not only did the Hmong experience a high death toll in the war, they also faced reprisals for collaborating with the Americans from their own. As refugees in the US, they emphasized the fact that they had proved their loyalty to the US by spilling their own blood. The Hmong were not the only ones to do so. During World War II, both Chinese Americans and Filipinos were “rebranded” as the “good” Asians because they were Allies during the war. For instance, the concept of the “Fighting Filipinos” of Bataan arose at that time. Similarly, some second-generation Japanese Americans volunteered to fight in Europe during World War II. Their segregated unit, 442, proved its loyalty to the US also by spilling blood and becoming highly decorated American heroes.

“US international relations and concerns about national security also allow for some types of immigrant transnationalism to be accepted, and even celebrated, while the transnational activities of other immigrants—notably those who are connected to homelands suspected of terrorist activities—are viewed as threats. But despite persistent inequalities, some have found a balance between ‘here’ and ‘there’ without rejecting an ethnic or a single national identity.”

In the 21st century, there are many examples of “transnational,” or flexible, citizens, who maintain ties both to the United States and Canada and their historical homelands. In some cases, they even maintain mobile lifestyles, traveling between the continents. In the author’s view, such citizens benefit both their North American homes and the countries of ancestral origin by investing in them. However, their ability to do so is still defined by US foreign policy toward their countries of origin.

“Once cast as inassimilable and racially inferior foreigners who were threats to the United States, Asian Americans are now the poster children of American success and are sometimes even called ‘honorary whites.’ But this portrait is misleading. It masks persistent inequalities and disparities among Asian Americans and relies on a new and divisive language of racism.”

Asian Americans have often been referred to as a “model minority” since the 1960s because some members of this group have achieved tremendous socioeconomic success. In this context, Asian Americans have been compared to whites and pitted against other groups, such as Latin Americans, by certain politicians and the media. Despite this image of success, 2010 census data reveals that Asians are found on both ends of the economic spectrum. They also continue to face racism, especially when they are linked to their historic homelands in terms of the current relationship between them and the United States. For this reason, the 21st-century story of Asian Americans remains complex.