In his book “Ghosts of Gold Mountain,” Gordon H. Chang, a History Professor at Stanford University, suggests that the reception to the Chinese was positive at first, a marked contrast with the anti-Chinese rhetoric that would characterize the 1880s. San Francisco’s city leaders viewed immigration as a prized cultural interchange while merchants envisaged trade relationships between China and the United States. In the summer of 1850, religious leaders embraced immigrants with a welcome ceremony in Portsmouth Square of San Francisco where books, Bibles, and religious tracts were gifted. Amongst the speakers was Reverend Albert Williams, of the First Presbyterian Church, who described "the pleasure shared in common by the citizens of San Francisco, at their presence."
However, as the number of immigrants climbed and the demographic of the state gradually shifted, anxiety stirred and hostility emerged in the minds of white Americans. Miners had journeyed from far and wide to discover that the Gold Rush was little more than an illusion. They directed their frustrations at the Chinese. In the spring of 1852, a group of whites incorrectly suggested that the Chinese had stolen all gold, denounced the presence of "degraded Asiatics," and, accompanied by a band playing music, drove off 200 immigrants from the American River. Emboldened by the success of their first attack, they traveled across camps to do the same to hundreds of others.
These miners’ position was not, however, unique nor isolated. As the decade progressed, similar episodes became widespread in society, representing a turning point in the American perception of the Chinese. For instance, Ngai explains that Chinese immigrants offered workforce competition as they could be hired for considerably cheaper than white laborers. John Bigler, a Democrat struggling in his 1852 reelection campaign for California governor, capitalized on anti-Chinese sentiment for political gain. He ordered that the California state legislature "check this tide of Asiatic immigration" and suggested that Chinese immigration had contributed to widespread unemployment. In tandem with his comment concerning the labor force, Bigler attacked Chinese immigrants’ moral character, arguing that they had immigrated not to receive the "blessings of a free government" but only to "acquire a certain amount of the precious metals." Such a statement allowed Bigler to explicitly differentiate the Chinese from white European immigrants, with the Chinese cast as not principled enough to seek freedom.
Additionally, Chinese residents were blamed as the originators of diseases, and their lifestyles were criticized as conducive to the spread of outbreaks. Smallpox and syphilis outbreaks were common during the 1870s - 1890s in San Francisco. In an attempt to divert blame, the city’s public health officer, Dr. John Meares, advanced the baseless claim that the 1876 smallpox outbreak was the fault of "unscrupulous, lying, and treacherous Chinamen [with a] disregard for our sanitary laws." Political cartoons, like the "Three Graces," fortified Meares’ caricature. Published in an 1882 edition of The Wasp, this cartoon depicted three spirits hovering above the homes of Chinese residents: leprosy, smallpox, and malarium. The image was disseminated across society, establishing the steadfast perception in the minds of Westerners that the Chinese were inherently diseased. Most notably, the ideology of the Workingmen’s Party, a national labor organization, centered such a sentiment. Following the 1879 mayoral election of Isaac Kalloch, the Workingmen’s candidate, the party published a lengthy report portraying Chinese-manufactured products as "[produced with] the dirtiest holes imaginable." Beyond the 1882 Act, such rhetoric led to a slew of consequential policy. In 1899, health officials closed Chinese-owned businesses and instituted a year-long quarantine, denying the Chinese access to their white counterparts. By the turn of the century, the Chinese were segregated from white patients in hospitals, if not shut out of sanitation institutions entirely.
An examination of popular periodicals, transcripts of government hearings, and labor pamphlets further reveals a pattern of systematic scapegoating. As Ngai explains, the virulent anti-Chinese movement became a sort of shape-shifting cause: a convenient political instrument whenever white Americans needed a racial scapegoat. At the heart of each attack was the underlying perception that Chinese immigrants were fundamentally unassimilable to American life. Perhaps James Phelan, San Francisco’s mayor, worded this idea most sensationally in suggesting that Chinese immigrants were disruptive to the "perpetuity of our institutions and the standard of our civilization." Worse yet, many communities suggested that this so-called heathen race deserved to be purged from America altogether. Beth Lew-Williams, a Professor of History at Princeton University, indicates that at least 168 communities forced their Chinese residents to leave in the 1880s.
By this point, xenophobia pervaded the attitudes of whites across California. A series of high-profile hearings held by the California State Senate Committee allowed the issue of immigration to enter the national spotlight. During a hearing in 1870, H.N. Clement, a San Francisco lawyer, drew directly from a playbook that Californian politicians had relied on for decades, decrying: "The Chinese are coming. How can we stop them?" Clement’s testimony was broadcast to a diverse audience across the nation. His message was a simple appeal to Westerns’ emotions – an attempt to arouse patriotism through the suggestion that Chinese immigration was an unarmed invasion. During an 1876 hearing, John L. Durkee, the Fire Marshal of San Francisco, portrayed a similar inundation, sounding the alarm: "property around here is constantly depreciating in value, because of the approach of the Chinese. The whites cannot stand their dirt and the fumes of opium, and are compelled to leave the vicinity… Chinamen violate the fire ordinances." Despite citing fire ordinance violations, Durkee was probably not concerned for the city’s safety. Instead, his message was filled with racial overtones, exhibiting contempt through suggestions that the Chinese "are more trouble than all white people put together." Nevertheless, Clement’s provocatives and Durkee’s epithet intensified the American citizenry’s shift against Chinese immigrants.
In 1882, years of misleading fear mongering gave way to the passage of the nation’s first significant race-based immigration law: the Chinese Exclusion Act. Under the Act, the only legal avenue for a Chinese immigrant to be granted entry into America was a "question[ing] under immigration laws… at the limit of its jurisdiction," an official claim of citizenship, and possession of certificates of residence and identity. If a laborer was found in the United States’ jurisdiction without the required documentation, they would be subject to deportation, fines, and even imprisonment.
Conclusion
Erika Lee, a Professor of History at Harvard University, suggests that the Chinese exclusion era represents an early instance of American gatekeeping tradition. In order to evaluate Lee’s interpretation, we must first define "gatekeeping," a term widely used in national policy discussions, media coverage, and academia. At its core, the metaphor refers to the United States’ efforts to limit immigration throughout history, reflective of white Americans’ antipathy to change in the formerly dominant White Protestant hierarchy. Dr. Lee suggests that the purpose of nearly every gatekeeping policy can be simplified into one of the following three end objectives: radicalization of immigrants, containment of their geographic mobility, and protection of the nation by barring their naturalized citizenship.32 Lee’s interpretation is exemplified by the evidence that has been presented in this paper. During the Chinese exclusion era, radicalization occurred through scapegoating and stereotype characterizations, containment materialized through segregationist policy, especially in the healthcare system, and the 1882 Exclusion Act directly barred citizenship.
"The Chinese Question never really went away," Ngai writes. "The idea that China poses a threat to Euro-American civilizations remained just beneath the surface." Indeed, complex racial dynamics and overt anti-Chinese discrimination endure to the present day, even as the United States and China are two economic, cultural, and political juggernauts. Democrats and Republicans politicians in the United States have warned against the threat posed by China’s regime. Anti-Chinese sentiment was especially salient during the Covid-19 pandemic, when President Trump and others spoke of the "China virus" and "kung flu." Within these messages, it is possible to hear echoes of John Bigler, John Meares, and other nineteenth century San Francisco leaders. For many Asian Americans, a sense of belonging in America remains elusive, or worse yet, feels conditional.
Works Referenced
Primary Sources
Keller, George F. San Francisco’s Three Graces. Illustration. San Francisco: The Wasp, May 26, 1882. From Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. https://hti.osu.edu/opper/lesson-plans/immigration/images/san-franciscos-three-graces.
Meares, John. Annual Report of the Board of Health of the City and Country. Pamphlet. San Francisco: Board of Health, 1877. Accessed July 11, 2024.
Reich, George A. Memorial on Chinatown by an Investigating Committee of the Anti-Chinese Council. Pamphlet. San Francisco: Workingmen’s Party, 1880. From The Museum of the City of San Francisco. Accessed July 11, 2024. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist2/wpc12.html
United States v. Ju Toy, 198 U.S. (1904). https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep198253/.
Secondary Sources
Hamilton, Marian. "California Gold-Rush English." American Speech 7, no. 6 (1932): 423-33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/452295.
Lee, Erika. "The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924." Journey of American Ethnic History 21, no. 3 (2002): 36-62. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502847.
Lee, Erika. The Making of Asian America: A History: Simon & Schuster, 2015. Accessed July 13, 2024.
Leong, Jack Hang-Tat. "The Hong Kong Connection for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America." Stanford University Chinese Railroad Workers of North America Project, 2019. https://web.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/website/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Leong-Jack-Hong-Kong-Connection.pdf.
Luo, Michael. "America Was Eager for Chinese Immigrants. What Happened?" The New Yorker. Last modified August 23, 2021. Accessed June 24, 2024. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/30/america-was-eager-for-chinese-immigrants-what-happened.
Luo, Michael. "The Forgotten History of the Purging of Chinese from America." The New Yorker. Last modified April 22, 2021. Accessed August 20, 2024. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-forgotten-history-of-the-purging-of-chinese-from-america.
Mckeown, Adam. "Transnational Chinese Families and Chinese Exclusion, 1875-1943." Journal of American Ethnic History 18, no. 2 (1999): 73-110. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502416.
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. Chinatown Opera Theater in North America. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017. muse.jhu.edu/book/49639.
Wong, K. Scott. "Chinatown: Conflicting Images, Contested Terrain." MELUS 20, no. 1 (1995): 3-15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/467850.
Cover Image From: https://www.thecollector.com/chinese-exclusion-act-1882/