Traumas Experienced by Asian Americans (as a group)

The first significant Chinese immigration to America began with the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, and continued with subsequent large labor projects, such as the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad. During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not well received. As gold became harder to find and competition increased, animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners increased. After being forcibly driven from the mines, most Chinese settled in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took up low end wage labor such as restaurant and laundry work. With the post-Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s, anti-Chinese animosity became politicized by labor leader Denis Kearney and his Workingman's Party as well as by California Governor John Bigler, both of whom blamed Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels. Another significant anti-Chinese group organized in California during this same era was the Supreme Order of Caucasians, with some 60 chapters statewide. The Page Act of 1875 (Sect. 141, 18 Stat. 477, 1873-March 1875) was the first federal immigration law and prohibited the entry of immigrants considered "undesirable." The law classified as "undesirable" any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. The law was named after its sponsor, Representative Horace F. Page, a Republican who introduced to end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women. The bar on female Asian immigrants was heavily enforced and proved to be a barrier for all Asian women trying to immigrate, especially Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. This law was in effect until the passage of the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943 (61 years). The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in U.S. history. The Act excluded Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers employed in mining" from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation. Many Chinese were relentlessly beaten just because of their race. In the Pacific Rim states, numerous instances of racism and violence against people of Asian descent have continued into the 1970s. Nonwhites were prohibited from testifying against whites, a prohibition extended to the Chinese by People v. Hall. The Chinese were often subject to harder labor on the First Transcontinental Railroad, and often performed the more dangerous tasks such as using dynamite to make pathways through the mountains. The San Francisco Vigilance Movement, although ostensibly a response to crime and corruption, also systematically victimized Irish immigrants, and later this was transformed into mob violence against Chinese immigrants. Anti-Chinese sentiment was also rife in early Los Angeles, culminating in a notorious 1871 riot in which a mob attacked Chinese residents. In the ensuing inquests and trials, all the perpetrators either were acquitted, or received only light punishments for lesser offenses, because the testimony of Chinese witnesses was either completely inadmissible, or else considered less credible than that of others. Legal discrimination against Asian minorities was furthered with the passages of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the entrance of virtually all ethnic Chinese immigrants into the United States until 1943. A Sinophobic cartoon called "Yellow Terror" appeared in the United States in 1899.

Japanese-Americans: During World War II, the United States created concentration camps for citizens of the U.S. of Japanese descent, fearing that they would be spies for Imperial Japan. Not a single documented instance of this ever occurred; despite this few Japanese Americans had their property returned to them after the end of WW II. Internment: about 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States were moved to "War Relocation Camps." All who lived on the West Coast of the United States were interned, while in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, an estimated 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. Of those interned, 62% were American citizens. The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs (about $20,000 per person). The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau's role was denied for decades, but was finally proven in 2007. The Hmong, a mountain people of Laos, were convinced by the CIA to become U.S. allies during the Vietnam War. A noble, friendly folk with a 4000-year-old culture, they are the object of a genocidal campaign by the Laotian and Vietnamese governments. After years of persecution in refugee camps, some Hmong were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. in the 1970s. They were a non-literate hill farming people; despite this fact, all immigration centers in the U.S. were in large urban areas. Needless to say, the immigrants faced severe, debilitating challenges with little help from the U.S. government. Missionaries attempts to convert Hmong families to Christianity were among the pressures on the Hmong after coming to the U.S. One extreme effect of their trauma is Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome, a mysterious phenomenon that causes Hmong men to die in their sleep. Currently implemented immigration laws are still largely plagued with national origin-based quotas that are unfavorable to Asian countries due to large populations and historically low U.S. immigration rates. Current discrimination in sentencing (1982): A recent incident illustrating racism was the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982. Vincent was beaten to death by two White men (Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz) who called him a "Jap" (even though he was Chinese American) and blamed him and Japanese automakers for the recession. . After a brief argument, Vincent tried to run for his life until he was cornered nearby, held down by Nitz while Ebens repeatedly smashed his skull and bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat. The equally tragic part of this murder was how Vincent's murderers were handled by the criminal justice system. First, instead of being put on trial for second degree murder (intentionally killing someone but without premeditation), the prosecutor instead negotiated a plea bargain for reduced charges of manslaughter (accidentally killing someone). Second, the judge in the case sentenced each man to only two years probation and a $3,700 fine -- no jail time at all. The judge defended these sentences by stating that his job was to fit the punishment not just to the crime, but also to the perpetrators. In this case, as he argued, both Ebens and Nitz had no prior criminal record and were both employed at the time of the incident. Therefore, the judge reasoned that neither man represented a threat to society. However, others had a different interpretation of the light sentences. They argued that what the judge was basically saying was that as long as you have no prior criminal record and have a job, you could buy a license to commit murder for $3,700. As one Asian American pointed out, "You can kill a dog and get 30 days in jail, and 90 days for a traffic ticket."