This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From the California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters

This land was made for you and me

I grew up singing this song by Woody Guthrie. The fact that my dad, a naturalized citizen, could teach this to his students (he was a  music teacher) was a testimony to the great American melting pot. I took it for granted that I was an American by birth and that this was my land. But it wasn't always this way.

If you don't dig into history, you can believe the myth that the United States opened her arms wide to receive immigrants from all nations and from all backgrounds. In reality, we have a history marked by xenophobia. When I listened/read about the events that led up to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, I was shocked. This was my country, but my people were persecuted, driven from their homes, and even killed based on race.

I am not placing blame on anyone today. Those responsible are dead, but ideas linger. Mindsets are passed down from one generation to another along with stereotypes. Whether we like it or not, we are the product of our culture. And "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If we want to honor the good but reject the bad, we need to take heed to our history and examine the roots of our thinking.

Americans were first introduced to the Chinese through reports from U.S. traders, diplomats, and missionaries in China. Their portrayals of Chinese as heathen, crafty, and dishonest "marginal members of the human race" quickly set Chinese apart. At first seen as exotic curiosities from a distant land, Chinese immigrants came to be viewed as threats, especially as their numbers increased throughout the Gold Rush period and other changes in the United States shaped ideas about race and what it meant to be an American.¹

The message that Chinese immigration would bring destruction to California and the entire nation was made clear with the skull upon which the statue rests his foot, the rats scurrying around the pedestal, the capsized ships and crumbling statue foundation, the slant-eyed moon, the rays of light emanating from the coolie's head informing readers that Chinese bring "filth," "immorality," "diseases," and "ruin to white labor." With the wide dissemination of such racial images in mainstream popular culture, the anti-Chinese movement spread.²

In 1854, Chinese were officially granted unequal status along with other racial minorities when the California Supreme Court ruled that Chinese immigrants, African Americans, and Native Americans were prohibited from giving testimony in cases involving a white person. In support of the decision the court argued that Chinese immigrants were a "distinct people ... whom nature has marked as inferior."³

The campaign to restrict Chinese immigration begun in the United States ended up having far-reaching consequences for the regulation of immigration around the world. By the early twentieth century, a "restrictive international migration regime" was in place. Comprehensive immigration reform would not occur in the United States until 1965. The Chinese in America would live with the consequences of the exclusion laws for generations. And as other Asian immigrants followed in their footsteps, so did new anti-Asian laws that separated them from the rest of America as well.⁴

1. The Making of Asian American: A History, Erika Lee, Simon & Schuster, 2015, pg. 90.
2. Ibid. 91.
3. Ibid. 92.
4. Ibid. 108.