This month in 1867, 2,000 workers
went on strike during the construction of
the Transcontinental Railroad.
Over 15,000 Chinese laborers worked the dirtiest
and most dangerous jobs in the Sierra mountains
and were paid less than white workers.
They faced racism, violence, and later exclusion
with the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act,
which was the first and only legislation
to explicitly suspend immigration for a nationality.
Today, we're seeing a rise in anti-Asian sentiment
that has led to closed businesses, unwarranted blame
for the coronavirus, and led to hate
crimes against Asian-Americans.
I'm Yoonj Kim, and over the next few weeks,
we'll be discussing the significance
of these historic moments and what it tells us
about what's happening today.
I'll be in conversation with Lisa Sasaki,
the Interim Director of the Smithsonian American
Women's History Museum.
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Lisa, tell us about the Transcontinental Railroad
and what was happening with Chinese laborers at the time.
The Transcontinental Railroad was an important way
to connect the nation.
And as a result of that, there was a lot of labor
and much of the labor that was done in California
and through Utah was done primarily by Chinese laborers,
men who were coming over from China specifically
to work on the railroads, and it was
an incredibly dangerous job.
Many lives were lost as a part of this.
And then once they got there and the railroad
was completed as part of a golden spike ceremony--
NARRATOR: With a final golden spike,
East meets West at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869.
A photographer captures the sharing of a Democratic cup
of success, but the official engraving
omits not only the cup, but the Irish and Chinese laborers
as well.
LISA SASAKI: The amazing photographs
that we have of the time, you actually
don't see any of the Chinese laborers
who helped make that possible.
And what does the treatment of the Chinese laborers
on the railroad tell us about the treatment
of AAPI immigrants in the United States at the time in general?
LISA SASAKI: Oftentimes these labor groups that were coming
in were seen as a cheap source of labor,
that they were specifically brought
in by large companies in order to keep the costs down.
What that ended up doing, however,
is putting them directly into conflict
with communities of farmers or laborers
that already existed within those communities, many who
thought that this, quote unquote, "cheap labor"
was actually coming in and threatening
their own livelihoods.
And as a result, we start to see propaganda coming out
about a Yellow Peril, how dangerous these others are
coming from different parts of the world,
and how much of a threat they are to the United States.
Oftentimes, many of these Chinese laborers
were not staying in the United States, actually.
What they would do is be here for the jobs
that they were hired to do with full intentions of going back.
However, we do have community members
who can trace their ancestry back to the railroad
workers who decided to stay.
YOONJ KIM: And how did all of these events, the culmination
of these events, the Yellow Peril, the Railroad Strike,
how did these lead to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
and what was it?
The Chinese Exclusion Act is the first legislation
that we've ever seen before in the United States
that restricted immigration purely by nationality,
and that goes to the amount of fear
that people had here in the United States
about the labor coming over specifically from China.
And then when the legislation was expanded, so whether that's
the Immigration Act of 1924, for example, which specifically
mentions Japan and limited immigration from Japan
and other Asian countries, you then had those companies then
go to the next country, the Philippines,
after that, in a series of changes
in order to work around the legislation.
But I think what's so amazing about this
is, over time, what did end up happening is these strikes.
So even the laborers who were brought over
started to realize just the amount that they were doing,
the danger that they were in was not worth
what they were getting paid, and so the strikes came about,
unions came about.
We saw many, many communities who worked across language
barriers, across differences, to come together
in order to be able to promote and to demand
better working conditions.
A great story of that, for example,
happened in Hawaii on the plantations that were there.
And companies were bringing in workers, oftentimes
specifically so that they couldn't
speak each other's language.
And that's one of the reasons why Pidgin, Hawaiian Pidgin,
came into existence.
It was the workers finding a way in which they could communicate
with one another using different words from their own languages
in order to communicate.
Wow.
I think that's just a testament to the will of the immigrant
to survive even in the most oppressive conditions, the fact
that they created this new language to unify.
That's really inspiring and it kind of-- it
reminds me of what's going on right now
with a lot of the resistance and the hate
against Asian-run businesses and how the community is still
working together to support each other through the coronavirus
and through the epidemic of hate.
What lessons can we learn from the history you just described?
Well, we learned from this that, oftentimes, groups
get targeted for really no reason other than fear,
and I think that's the most important lesson that we can
take away, is that if we set our fear aside,
we start to realize that these are just men, women, children,
families who are just trying to exist in the same situation
that we all are in.
The coronavirus is a great example of that.
I think what we can really take away
from this is, first, address the fear,
and then also to stand together in solidarity with one another,
that how important it is that we all come together
and realize that we're all Americans, that we are all
working under the same restrictions, the same crisis,
that we can actually grow together
and be stronger together.
MAN: Stand up and fight back.
They know who we are.
We are Asian-Americans.
Bring your flags.
YOONJ KIM: So far we've been talking mostly
about Asian-Americans were first laborers in this country,
most like other immigrants.
So where did this model minority stereotype come from?
They were laborers, but they also, when they got here,
they started their own businesses,
they created their own communities that had newspapers
and needed doctors and lawyers.
There was also a part of the model minority myth
that has to do with assimilation.
So Asians were also seen as being model in the fact
that they were willing to assimilate
into mainstream America.
And as a result of that, they were often
seen as being a model for assimilation, and therefore,
the model minority going forward.
What it's really done, I think, now
is that it's created sort of this myth
that all Asian-Americans are successful.
But more importantly, what it also does
is it doesn't fully articulate the wide breadth
of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities,
which, there are over 70 different countries in which
our communities originate from, over 100
different languages spoken.
And so when you put everybody together
under this one heading, you oftentimes
miss really important statistics, information,
demographics that can tell you a lot
about what individual communities are going through.
But we can't forget that there are many
as well who are living under the poverty line
because they are doing jobs, taking care of people
in nursing homes or in hospitals,
or working in service industries like nail salons, restaurants,
where we start to see that they're
unable to make a living wage.
But if they're part of this model minority
where everyone is successful simply because you're Asian
and they don't benefit from the same services
and support that they need in order to be successful.
YOONJ KIM: Can you tell us about the case of Vincent Chin
and how that was a rallying cry for Asian-Americans
across the country to unite?
Definitely.
It also goes back to what we've been talking about related
to enterprise and fear.
Back in the '80s, the auto industry
was seeing great competition from Asia,
specifically Japan, where many auto working
plants were shutting down, the assembly lines
were shutting down.
And as a result, people were losing their jobs.
And there was a lot of fear, economic fear, where
their paychecks would be coming from,
and a lot of anger that was misdirected
towards Asian-Americans.
And Vincent Chin was killed because his attackers
mistakenly thought that he was Japanese.
What this really has taught us is the importance of solidarity
within the Asian-American community,
that Vincent Chin could be anyone who happened
to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, who
did nothing, didn't deserve anything,
but simply because of the way he looked, that he was targeted.
YOONJ KIM: Right.
And it speaks to the point that the Asian-American community
and Asian neighborhoods kind of have
to rally together and support each other in ethnic enclaves.
Tell us about why exactly this is so important.
Right now, we're actually seeing,
because of the coronavirus, Chinatowns
have been hit with so many economic pressures.
You saw that people weren't going to Chinatown because they
were afraid that somehow that they would be more likely to be
exposed there or in an Asian market
than they would be in their normal grocery stores.
And what we know now, thanks to the science
and to the tracking of the virus,
we know that, actually, the majority of cases
had come over through Europe rather than through Asia.
But these communities have been operating under economic stress
for months and months and months before the other businesses
across the United States felt it.
Absolutely.
That's why I try to make it a point to order something
from an Asian-run business or to go directly into Koreatown
where I grew up or a Chinatown and order takeout from there
because it just goes such a long way after everything
you mentioned, the ravages of the coronavirus
and the discrimination, to continue
supporting these communities.
I have spent a lot of time in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles,
and so I will say that Fugetsu-Do
is one of my favorite bakeries in Los Angeles.
So if you ever have a chance to go and get
a piece of sweets, a piece of mochi from there,
I would highly recommend it.
Oh yeah, that sounds so good right now.
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