Andrew W. Wang
In these culturally divisive times, writing can serve as a prism through which we can observe and better understand complicated or painful realities. Author Charles Yu uses his novel Interior Chinatown as a medium to both satirize and bring awareness to the issue of institutional racism in America.
The story follows Willis Wu, an Asian Americanactor and his struggle with being a background character in every show he is apart of. Since he was a boy, Willis was told that Kung Fu Guy was the onlyAsian character that would garner respect from a white audience and thePlatonic ideal for someone who looks like him. In the midst of Willis’s constant hustle tobecome Kung Fu Guy, his mother offers him the sage advice to be more. These words are not only a refrain throughout Yu’s novel, but also a mantra that Asians struggle to realize as they navigate their lives in America.
Like Wu, many Asian Americans have to deal with the dissonance between how they present themselves to a white audience and how they act privately, a version of the phenomenon that sociologist Erving Goffman called “the presentation of self.” However, it is not individual Asian people who made their lives this way. In reality, this necessity to conform and assimilate emerged from a system that was created by white people, and developed as a means of survival.
Because ofthis institutional racism, Asian Americans have been denied equal time underthe spotlight in media and politics throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.This must change because a continuous lack of accurate representation has led to damaging self-perception within Asian communities.
The US hasenforced racist policies against the Asian diaspora since its entrance into this country, therefore creating an internalized sense of inferiority among Asian Americans that has lasted generations.
The start of America’s systemic anti-Asiansentiment can be traced back to the gold rush of the 1840s and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. With an influx of Chinese immigrants coming to Californiain search of gold in the early 1800s, white laborers grew increasingly hostile over the years towards the Chinese and saw their presence as a threat to their financial success. As written by the US Office of the Historian:
Most Chinese laborers who came to the United States did so in order to send money back to China to support their families there. At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to America. These financial pressures left them little choice but to work for whatever wages they could. Non-Chineselaborers often required much higher wages to support their wives and childrenin the United States, and also generally had a stronger political standing to bargain for higher wages. Therefore many of the non-Chinese workers in the United States came to resent the Chinese laborers, who might squeeze them outof their jobs.
Because of this increasing resentment, Chinese immigrants were subject to great mistreatment and forcedaway from gold mines and into urban communities, the first Chinatowns. However, even after white laborers’ issues with Chinese immigrants were resolved, sinophobia continued from both grassroots movements and politicians fordecades. Blatantly dehumanizing Chinese immigrants, Sen. John F. Miller ofCalifornia, a proponent of the Chinese Exclusion Act, called Chinese workers“machine-like…of obtuse nerve, but little affected by heat or cold, wiry, sinewy, with muscles of iron” when describing how they worked in mines; at thesame time, white laborers “persisted in their stereotyping of the Chinese as degraded, exotic, dangerous, and competitors for jobs and wages” (Wu).
In responseto the concerns of the American people, the federal government passed the ChineseExclusion Act in 1882. The act prohibited any Chinese laborers from entering the country or reentering if they had left. Initially, it was only meant to last 10 years, but was extended 3 times to ultimately be repealed 61 yearslater in 1943. In this time span, Chinese communities were drastically affected:
[The exclusion law] significantly decreased the number of Chinese immigrants into the United States and forbade those who left to return. According to the U.S. national census in 1880, there were 105,465 Chinese in the United States, compared with 89,863 by 1900 and 61,639 by 1920. Chinese immigrants were placed under a tremendous amount of government scrutiny and were often denied entry into the country on any possible grounds… Families were forced apart, and businesses were closed down.(Wu).
The passing of the Exclusion Act makes it clear that sinophobia in America started from a systemic level and is to blame for the issues that have affected Asian communities for the past century. Although Asian Americans did what they could to resist the government and protest when the policy firstpassed, their efforts were powerless in the bigger picture. After facing systemic discrimination for decades upon decades, it would be difficult tocontinue looking at one’s own people with pride. This in part explains how the need to assimilate to dominant culture started.
Works Cited
1. Fang, Jenn. "The Decade in AsianAmerica." NBC News, 30 Dec.2019. NBC News, www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/decade-asian-america-n1108581.Accessed 27 Apr. 2020.
2. Lee,Elizabeth. First Asian American PresidentialCandidate Scrutinized by Asian Americans. Federal Information & NewsDispatch, LLC, Washington, 2019. ProQuest,https://search-proquest-com.newtrier.idm.oclc.org/docview/2305097102?accountid=36487.
3. Office of the Historian, Foreign ServiceInstitute. "Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts." Office of the Historian,history.state.gov/
milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration.Accessed 28 May 2020.
4. Wu, Yuning. "Chinese Exclusion Act."Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Nov.2013, www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-Exclusion-Act. Accessed 16 May 2020.
5. Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. New York, PenguinRandom House, 2020.
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