During the mid-1800s, many Chinese people immigrated to the United States. During Reconstruction, there was a great deal of discussion about how to treat African Americans and Chinese immigrants. Over the course of time as the South reunited with the Union, attitudes towards the Chinese became more and more hostile, leading to efforts to ban immigration from China. Along with this came an entire Anti-Chinese movement that culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese were discriminated against partially because they did not and, because of their race, could not adapt to the culture around them. They spoke different languages, ate different foods, and wore different clothes than what American society deemed acceptable. One notable example of this was the long queue that Chinese men kept their hair in. It was considered a disgrace in China to cut one’s queue, but in America it marked yet another way that the Chinese refused to assimilate into American culture.
In order to understand the treatment of Chinese immigrants during this time, it is important to understand why cultural and racial differences were so unacceptable. The theory of Social Darwinism was popular in the U.S. during the 19th century. This theory applied Darwin’s biological theory of “survival of the fittest” to social phenomena. According to Social Darwinian thinkers, human existence is an eternal struggle in which, to quote Thucydides, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The people in society who conform prevail and the weak are cast aside. People in the late 1800s applied this as a struggle for racial domination. Certain people believed that racial mixing led to the weakening of the white race, because, to them, the way to be the best was to be as white as possible. Using this definition, the Chinese who were resistant to change were the weak and uncivilized group, and suffered accordingly.
The above photograph is of the Tualatin family, now called the Byrom-Daufel family, one of the many Chinese families to immigrate to the United States, specifically Oregon, in the 1890s. This photograph was taken after they had already immigrated to the U.S. and contains examples of how little assimilation the Chinese immigrants attempted. It is unclear whether or not the father has kept his long queue, but it seems like he still has his shaved forehead. The style of clothing borrowed heavily from the Manchu culture, which even in Chinese culture was an ethnic minority. This photograph contrasts with photos of immigrants (or Native Americans) who did assimilate into white American culture. Back then, people dressed up in their finest to take photographs because it was both expensive and time consuming. It was not like now when everybody has a camera with unlimited film in their pocket. The fact that the way that they want to be portrayed is in their traditional Chinese clothes and not in a nice suit or cotton dress pretty distinctly displays their values. Perhaps they not value American clothes or culture as highly as they did their own.
That is not to say that assimilation was ever really an option for the Chinese immigrants. They were denied citizenship and the governor of California even requested the Chinese exclusion law because they were, in his words, “non assimilable”. This family was probably not even allowed to live in the city proper as many immigrants were forced to live in the inner city or in separate “Chinatowns”. It was due to the segregation that the Chinese immigrants retained their language and culture to the degree that they did. Thus, a vicious cycle began. Americans segregated Chinese immigrants because they did not assimilate into American culture and Chinese immigrants did not assimilate into American culture because they were segregated from it. The fact that the Tualatin family kept these clothes in such good condition could also possibly imply that, like many Chinese immigrants, they intended to gain enough money from whatever job that they held in the United States and eventually return to China. Therefore, there was no need for them to adopt American dress or culture.
However, Aarim-Heriot shows a different opinion of why the Chinese had trouble being accepted into American culture. He brings up Henry C. Bennett’s address to the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute in which he claims that Chinese immigrants did, in fact, adopt American customs, and that the only reason that they were rejected from American society was because they simply worked too hard and too cheaply. According to Bennett, the Chinese immigrants “deprived whites of employment and threatened social tranquility.
The way that he describes the problems that the Chinese face is not unlike the problems that the Irish immigrants faced during the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s or that African Americans faced in the North in the wake of the Civil War. Working class whites were afraid that these “foreign” groups would come in, offering to work for lower wages, and steal all of the blue collar jobs. This interpretation, while Aarim-Heriot does not seem to agree with it completely, does explain the significant amount of anti-Chinese violence that went on in the decades following the completion of the railroads and the end of the gold strike. Still, this view does not take into account the rampant, illogical, and racist xenophobia that was common at the time.
There is a section in Hammer in Their Hands that has a very similar opinion. It does, agrees with Bennett that one of the main reasons for the anti-Chinese sentiments in the late 19th century was due to job competition. It claims that, “In the wake of the Gold Rush, San Francisco emerged as a city where white labor was relatively well organized and where they viewed ‘people of color,’ particularly Chinese immigrants, as dangerous competition for their jobs.” Later on, though, Hammer in Their Hands says that Chinese immigrants, because of this hatred, developed small businesses that were isolated and usually all Chinese “for economic survival”. White Americans would not work at or solicit Chinese places of business.
Conversely, the large migration of Italians to America during the 1920s and 1930s did not have this problem at all. In the 1880s, there were approximately 20,000 Italians in New York City, but by 1910, that number had soared to about 500,000 Italians. Most of these Italian immigrants were average, law-abiding citizens, but some were members of the Sicilian Mafia, fleeing the fascist reign of Benito Mussolini. In 1920, the 18th amendment was passed, banning the production, sale, transportation, exportation, importation and consumption of alcohol. This amendment, along with the devastating stock market crash that followed nine years later, put many people in poverty, driving some of them to seek alternative, less legal means of employment. The Italian gangs had no problem getting Americans to support their booming bootlegging businesses. So, even though, like the Chinese, Italians lived in their own small pocket communities, they were able to appeal to the American concept of consumerism to achieve success in their new country. In fact, these gangs got so successful in the bootlegging business that they were able to cover other markets like drugs, labor unions, and legitimate businesses like restaurants.
The Mafia in America became successful because they used America’s burgeoning culture of consumerism to their advantage. They cornered markets that no one else was willing or able to operate in like prostitution or gambling. They basically sold vice. This went both ways because the more money that they earned and the more powerful they became, the more extravagant their lives became. Italian mobsters from Charles “Lucky” Luciano to “The Teflon Don” John Gotti prided themselves on their fashionable clothes and lavish lifestyles. In his book Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, David E. Ruth writes of 1920s gangsters lifestyles: "The latest styles marketed the gangster as an avid consumer who invested the time and expense necessary to stay on the leading edge of fashion . . . his new automobile, his tastefully furnished apartment, his diamond stickpin, his two diamond rings, his belt buckle... fifty suits of clothes, his twenty five pairs of shoes." Some of the most popular movies of the time were gangster movies and real gangsters were influenced by the way that they saw themselves portrayed in Hollywood. Thus, they began to emulate the ostentatious clothing and lifestyle.
If being civilized meant that one had money and access to goods and services, then the American Mafia was certainly civilized. “Lucky” Luciano is quoted as saying, “If you have a lot of what people want and can’t get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough.” This is the essence of consumerism. Regardless of people’s position on the proverbial food chain, they are all involved in business transactions almost all of the time. They are all consumers of something. Al Capone is quoted as saying something similar. “I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.” It was the American dream come true. An Italian immigrant comes to the United States with nothing. He struggles to make ends meet through conventional means, so he pulls himself up by his bootstraps and becomes a wealthy businessman through resourcefulness, loyalty, and hard work.
Clearly, something changed in the 30 or so years between the Chinese and Italian migration trends. One of these changes is a technological change that made it easier to mass produce consumer products. This technological revolution took the shape of the moving assembly line like Abrams discusses in The Invention of the Moving Assembly Line: A Revolution in Manufacturing. Consumerism culture began as a direct result of things like new products being available on the market, mass production, and better advertising techniques with the advent of the radio. The economy in post World War I America was booming and the 1920s were a decade of tremendous prosperity. During the war and the Industrial Revolution that preceded it, the United States had been building up its industrial might, and in the Roaring Twenties, found an outlet for it. The shift from wartime production to peacetime production meant new technologies like the automobile and other mass produced products that led to a vibrant consumer culture. Americans had more leisure time and more money to spend on nonessential items, so they were eager to spend.
However, there is evidence that this attitude had begun to change even before the Great War was completely over. The 1918 Americanization Bulletin, claims that it is beneficial to “give immigrants better opportunities and… bring native and foreign born Americans together in more friendly relations [and]... to give native born Americans a better understanding of foreign born Americans”. This improving attitude may have been due to the fact that people began receiving higher wages as a result of the war opening up jobs, just like World War II would do thirty years later.
The Chinese immigration during the Gold Rush and the subsequent discrimination that followed had effects that would last at least until the 1960s. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was only intended to last ten years, but it ended up being made permanent in 1902. It would not be repealed until the Magnuson Act passed in 1943. The Chinese Exclusion Act caused the economic health of the U. S. to dwindle for a time. The United States was in the midst of Reconstruction from the Civil War, which was expensive and cost resources. As a result of the Exclusion Act, the U.S. lost a significant Chinese labor force.
Not many other groups besides the Chinese immigrants were willing to provide the necessary hard work and manual labor for the little pay. Thus, by passing the Act, America was suffocating their economy. The United States has made significant strides in Asian American race relations since then. For instance, the Supreme Court case United States vs. Wong Kim Ark states that the Chinese Exclusion Act cannot be used to overrule the 14th amendment. In other words, a person born in the United States cannot be denied citizenship because of their Asian heritage.
The Darwinian idea that certain races are weaker than other races and so are not fit to survive has had a lasting impression. Not to bring Godwin’s Law into this, but it was this kind of eugenical thinking that led to the extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust. It was also this kind of thinking that led to racist IQ tests during the American Civil Rights Movement.
The most significant effect of the rise of the Mafia was that the bootleggers invested their profits into various other areas of illegal activity, including gambling, narcotics, loansharking, pornography, prostitution, and business and labor racketeering, and into legitimate business as well. Various crime syndicates interlocked into a national network to regulate organized crime. Prohibition gave them the power and incentive to cohere as a group.
It’s effect was so strong that the American Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra, is still with us today, although their power peaked in the 1960s. They moved onto rackets of a bigger scale, especially gambling. The American Mafia created the city of Las Vegas as we know it today and had a very profitable empire going on in Cuba until Fidel Castro overthrew the government in the 1950s.
Out of these two theories, consumerism is the one that still applies today, in my opinion. That does not necessarily mean it is a good or healthy influence, but American culture is still affected by it in a significant way. Consumerism is manifested in the purchase of goods or services and that is what today’s intensely, globally capitalist society is based on. People are judged based on the kind of products that they are able to buy. This has gotten to the point where people will do things like spray paint the bottom of their shoes red to look like they make enough money to afford Christian Louboutins.
A good analogy for contemporary consumerism is Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. He does not have a stomach. When he attempts to eat cookies, they simply crumble and fall out of his mouth. Despite this, I believe that he truly loves cookies. It does not matter that where most people have stomachs, he has someone’s arm. He keeps eating, even though he cannot eat.
Now, people from every class can be leisurely consumers, instead of just the upper class. Every day, we are bombarded with advertisements claiming that this product will “set us free”. There is a significant thought that a wholly civilized person is someone who has the freedom to purchase whatever they please. They gain their main pleasure in life from consuming. People who do not or cannot consume everything that they would like to are “not really living”.
However, saying that Social Darwinism has disappeared completely would be naive. Even the eastern idea of karma that invaded western culture in the 1960s and 1970s feeds into the idea that your survival, economic or otherwise, relies entirely within your control. It relies heavily on the idea that certain traits or characteristics will determine the survival of an organism or a race. As long as prejudice and racism exist, Social Darwinism will still be affecting society in one way or another.
Abrams, Dennis. The Invention of the Moving Assembly Line: A Revolution in Manufacturing. New York: Chelsea House, 2011.
Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, 2nd edition. Edited by Jeffrey Lehman. New York: Gale Group, 2000
Heriot, Najia. Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848-82. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Photo courtesy of the BYROM-DAUFEL FAMILY
Pursell, Carroll W. A Hammer in Their Hands: A Documentary History of Technology and the African-American Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.
Ruth, David E. Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918-1934. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Sequence 7 (Page 1): Americanization Bulletin. New York City : Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Education, [1918]-. Harvard University Library PDS. September 15, 1918.
Tim, Rode. "Business." In Are You Drifting?, 76. Balboa Pr, 2013.
"Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences." Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences. Accessed December 1, 2015. https://www.kon.org/urc/v9/tian.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment