2:11 p.m. ET, March 18, 2021
There's a long history of anti-Asian racism in the US
From CNN's Aditi Sangal
Violence against Asian Americans has been on the rise since the pandemic began, but the community has
long faced discrimination in the United States, going back all the way to mid-19th century, when the first Chinese migrants arrived in the country.
Discrimination by law
The
Page Act of 1875 was enacted seemingly to restrict prostitution and forced labor. But many scholars have argued that in reality, it was used
systematically to prevent Chinese women from immigrating to the US, under the pretense that they were prostitutes.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese workers from coming to the US. To support their families back home and to repay loans they took to migrate to the US, Chinese workers were often forced to work for whatever wages they were offered. “Many of the non-Chinese workers in the United States came to resent the Chinese laborers, who might squeeze them out of their jobs,”
according to the Office of the Historian with the US State Department.
The immigration Act of 1924 excluded from entry anyone born in a geographically defined “Asiatic Barred Zone," except for Japanese and Filipinos. In 1907, the Japanese government had voluntarily limited Japanese immigration to the US and the Philippines was a US colony, so its citizens were American nationals.
In the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing and by an executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, almost all Japanese Americans had to leave their homes and
live in camps against their constitutional rights. These immigrants were painted as disloyal and it was considered an issue of public safety.
Anti-Asian attacks and riots
In 1871, Los Angeles witnessed the Chinese massacre, where about 500 rioters killed 18 people or 10% of the city’s Chinese population,
according to the L.A. Public Library. Eight people were convicted of manslaughter, but the convictions were overturned and no one was retried.
The anti-Asian sentiments continued amid a hard economic period. In 1885, a
disturbing trend of forced evacuation emerged in Tacoma, Washington, where a mob of about 300 people drove about 700 Chinese people out of their homes and forced them into wagons. When they heard about the violence, 150 Chinese people fled neighboring Seattle. In 1886, 350 Chinese were forced out of their homes and most were shipped to San Francisco.
A series of anti-Filipino riots took place in 1929 and 1930 in farming communities across California. For example, a mob of about 500 White people roamed Watsonville, California, attacking Filipino farmworkers and their property after Filipino men were considered to not only be
taking jobs, but also flaunting social norms by dating White girls.
In the 1980s, a Chinese American named
Vincent Chen was mistaken as Japanese and beaten to death by two White men who blamed Japan for the loss of auto jobs.
And since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,
many Asian Americans have been coughed on, spat on, harassed and attacked. The Atlanta shootings have only highlighted that the community is on edge with their long-lived fears and trauma that goes back centuries.
CNN's Harmeet Kaur contributed to this report.
Avlon: Asian-American discrimination is a horrific chapter of our history