The Chinese in America

by Iris Chang

  In June 1999, Ted Lieu, a United States Air Force captain who grew up in Ohio and attended college in California, wrote the following for the Washington Post:

  “Are you in the Chinese Air Force?” the elegantly dressed lady sitting next to me asked. For a moment I was left speechless. We were at an awards dinner and I was proudly wearing my blue United States Air Force uniform, complete with captain’s bars, military insignia, and medals. Her question jarred me and made me realize that even Air Force blue was not enough to reverse her initial presumption that people with yellow skin and Asian features are somehow not Americans. I wish this was just an isolated incident. Unfortunately, too many people today still view Asian Americans as foreigners in America ... As an officer in the United States Air Force, one day I may be called to give my life to my country. It would be a shame if some people still question what I mean when I say “my country.”

  Scratch the surface of every American celebrity of Chinese heritage and you will find that, no matter how stellar their achievements, no matter how great their contribution to U.S. society, virtually all of them have had their identities questioned at one point or another.

  Connie Chung, the second woman in American history to co-anchor a network nightly news broadcast, survived an unwelcoming newsroom atmosphere. Being one of the few women was bad enough, but as she adds, “In those early days at CBS, ‘71 to ’76, people were saying ‘Yellow Journalism’—little remarks that were clearly racist.” But as late as 1990, Cliff Kincaid, a radio host in Washington, D.C., would call her “Connie Chink.”

  Maya Lin, now the most famous female architect in the United States, was viciously attacked when, as a Yale undergraduate in 1980, she won a nationwide contest to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. “How can you let a gook design this?” some veterans asked. “How did it happen that an Asian-American woman was permitted to make a memorial for American men who died fighting in Asia?”65

  After her novel The Joy Luck Club became a literary blockbuster, author Amy Tan had to struggle to get it produced in Hollywood. Before the movie was released, one film executive complained to Chris Lee, the Chinese American president of Columbia TriStar, that there were “no Americans” in The Joy Luck Club. Lee retorted, “There are Americans in it. They just don’t look like you.”66

  At the 1998 Olympics, when U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan finished second after her teammate Tara Lipinski, the headlines on MSNBC read, “American beats Kwan.” Many Chinese Americans were distressed that the media automatically considered Kwan a foreigner when in fact she had been born, reared, and trained in the United States. Four years later, this error was repeated after Kwan lost the gold medal to Sarah Hughes. In a secondary headline, the Seattle Times announced, “American outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in skating surprise.”

  In 1998, when Matt Fong, a California state treasurer, ran for the U.S. Senate, reporters asked him which country he would support if China and the United States went to war. Fong was a fourth-generation American and the son of March Fong Eu, the first Asian American woman to serve as a California secretary of state. He lost the race and later told Time magazine, “There is a subtle stereotyping and racism below the surface.”

  In May 2001, David Wu, the first Chinese American ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was stopped when he tried to enter the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. “Most strikingly I was asked a couple of times whether I am a U.S. citizen or not,” Wu later said. “This was both after I showed my congressional ID and after Ted Liu [Wu’s congressional aide] showed him his staff ID.”

  In 2001, Elaine Chao, a Harvard Business School graduate who had served as chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission and assistant secretary of transportation, made history as the first Chinese American to accept a Cabinet position when President George W Bush named her secretary of labor. When her critics attacked her business ties with China, her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saw “subtle racism,” “yellow fever,” and xenophobic attitudes in the media.

  Time and again, the question is posed within the Chinese American community: How many hoops do we have to jump through to be considered “real” Americans?

  These episodes of racism do not occur by accident, in a vacuum. Nor do they arise solely on the basis of physical differences. Throughout American history, and indeed the history of most societies, the ruling class has carefully exploited differences in race and ethnicity as a mechanism of control—as a convenient smokescreen to make their own control more palatable. Racism has often divided and diminished American labor—by thwarting the union of white and colored workers to help them win on issues that affect them all—and has enabled the government to expand its scope of authority during emergencies, such as economic depression, or war. At such times, entire ethnic groups can be vilified and sacrificed as scapegoats to rally other people behind a leader’s solution. Such was the fate of the Chinese in America on the eve of the exclusion era.

  As this book neared completion, anti-Chinese sentiment rose again, in a resurgence of hatred reminiscent of the pre-exclusion days. This time, it derived its energy from popular fear of sweeping international forces: the globalization of the economy and the rise in power and prestige of the People’s Republic of China.

  At the dawn of the third millennium, China emerged, both economically and militarily, as a global superpower. Chinese industrial and technological development rushed forward at such breathtaking speed that some economic experts anointed the twenty-first century as the “Chinese century.”67 In September 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, signifying its full legitimacy in the international marketplace and resuscitating fears that American jobs would be lost to Chinese hordes willing to work for very little. At the same time, the decline of the former Soviet empire stoked American fears about China’s armed forces, which command the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world as well as the greatest military in Asia. Washington has wavered between depicting China as our newest tradingpartner and market and, with the demise of the Soviet bloc, as the successor enemy in the post-cold war era.68

  A telling incident occurred in April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea, apparently flying too close to an American navy spy plane on a routine U.S. surveillance mission, caused the American pilot to take sudden evasive action, resulting in a midair collision. The Chinese pilot was killed and the Chinese government detained the twenty-four American crew members of the spy plane after they made an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. After eleven days of tense negotiations and a carefully worded apology from the United States, the PRC released the crew, but by that time the Chinese American community had suffered a fierce backlash from their fellow Americans. Patrick Oliphant, a Pulitzer Prize—winning cartoonist, published a shocking caricature of a Chinese man, complete with buck teeth and thick glasses, serving cat gizzards. The National Review complained that the Chinese “put MSG in everything” and claimed, “if my dog were a member of the American crew Jiang Zemin would have eaten him by now.”

  During the spy plane crisis, recalls Theresa Ma, a Chinese American chemist in Lincoln, Nebraska, a neighbor approached her and asked, “Why don’t you go to China to bring our men home?” This neighbor could not figure out the difference between Chinese Americans and Chinese foreign nationals—despite the fact that many Chinese Americans were U.S. citizens whose families had lived here for generations.

  Some members of the media recommended the mass dismissal or expulsion or even imprisonment of the entire Chinese American community. In Springfield, Illinois, two radio deejays urged the boycott of all Chinese American restaurants, suggested that all Chinese Americans be shipped out of the country, and telephoned people with Chinese last names to harass them. A Fox News host called for Chinese employees to be fired from the national laboratories. A national talk-show host demanded that Chinese Americans be interned by the federal government, as the Japanese Americans were during World W
ar II.69

  Surveys have demonstrated the depth of anti-Chinese sentiment. A 2001 Gallup poll found that more than 80 percent of Americans viewed the PRC as “dangerous.” In another poll, a national telephone survey commissioned by the Committee of One Hundred and the Anti-Defamation League of 1,216 randomly selected adult Americans, close to half thought that Chinese Americans “passing secrets to the Chinese government is a problem.” Almost a third believed Chinese Americans were more loyal to the PRC than to the U.S. And in the political arena, Chinese and other Asian Americans stood out as the most unpopular candidates of all. Among those surveyed, more people felt reluctant to vote for an Asian American president than for a woman, an African American, or a Jewish American.

  For the Chinese American community, these polls confirmed many of their worst fears—that their acceptance was linked to the ever-shifting relations between the United States and China rather than to their own particular behavior. It was sobering to consider that, more than a century after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, they were still perceived by many to be strangers in their own country.

  The anti-Chinese backlash engendered much soul-searching and debate within the Chinese American community. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw endless, frantic discussions on how to prove one’s loyalty to the United States, or whether to confront these attitudes with organized protests. Some immigrants began to blame themselves for being too complacent—for immersing themselves in their careers and families, and not braving the risks of participation in affairs of the larger world. On Internet chat groups and in public forums, they openly questioned whether they had been giving the right message to the next generation. Was it, perhaps, short-sighted to discourage their children from careers in the media and the arts, careers that could influence public perception of Chinese Americans, in favor of the more anonymous fields of science and technology? Could the putative security offered by such fields have been nothing more than an illusion? Were they wrong to warn their children to avoid politics? Could their own memories of repressive regimes in Asia have nudged them toward a safe haven of political apathy in the United States?

  The national hostility to Chinese Americans also provoked high-profile discussions among community leaders and prominent activist groups such as the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Committee of One Hundred, and 80/20.70 Some advocated bloc-vote strategies to give the community greater political clout; others discussed devoting more resources to public relations and philanthropy; still others encouraged ethnic Chinese to drape American flags over their windows. Like so many other immigrants, Chinese Americans knew they had made a genuine, permanent contribution to the United States, a place they now called home. They wanted to create a future where honoring one’s heritage, and embracing one’s country patriotically, would not be considered conflicting desires.

  Though there was often much disagreement about the best route to take, no one doubted that some kind of collective political action was needed. As David Ho, the renowned AIDS researcher and Time’s Man of the Year in 1996, reminded other Chinese Americans, “We need our Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons to scream bloody murder when an injustice is carried out against our community.”

  This had to be done not only for themselves, but for the future of their children. American-born Chinese youths were also eloquently voicing their concerns about the difficulty and confusion inherent in growing up a minority, and the triple pressures weighing on them: the pressure to excel, the pressure to become white, and the pressure to embrace their ethnic heritage. Some felt they had to work harder, to perform twice as well as whites and be content with half the rewards. Others confessed embracing racial shame, trying to obliterate their Chinese heritage. While in many instances this rejection meant dating only whites and forfeiting the language and traditions of their ancestors,in extreme cases it extended to surgically altering their eyelids to look more Caucasian. Yet others took the opposite tack, befriending and dating only other Chinese Americans, traveling to China to find spouses, or exploring their identity through genealogical research programs in China.

  When it comes to fighting racism, no easy solutions exist. Perhaps the best hope for change lies in education, coupled with greater participation in the American democratic process. The future of Chinese Americans will depend on their ability to reclaim their voices—their ability to speak out, make their presence felt, and break out of the model-minority mold that has permitted others to define and dictate the form and extent of their success. Their obligations are no different from those of all Americans. We must exercise both our rights and responsibilities as patriotic citizens: voting and running for office, engaging in dialogue with lawmakers, airing our political opinions in the broader media, exposing systemic abuse and injustice within the government and other institutions. It is not enough to make a speech or just wave a flag, though—we need to make firm challenges to our government and ourselves to honor the civil liberties of all Americans. It is our right as Americans, our privilege, and our responsibility.

  Only when American society is truly empowered by education and committed to respect for the human rights of all will it attain the confidence to see race and culture for what it is—a dynamic, ever-changing life force. The future is impossible to predict, but I believe the definition of “Chinese America” itself will grow more complex with time. Already the lines between the ethnic Chinese and other groups are blurring. The Chinese in the United States marry other Asians in record numbers, and the concept of “Chinese American” may be replaced by a new racial identity: “Asian American.” Meanwhile, marriages between Chinese Americans and non—Asian Americans have produced new generations that resist easy labels. Indeed, for some, ethnic identity has become a matter of personal choice as much as indisputable racial appearance or heritage.

  Take, for instance, the actor Cy Wong. His great-grandfather migrated from Cuba to Louisiana in 1867 to work as an indentured plantation laborer. After fulfilling the term of his contract, he remained in the American South and married a Creole woman. His son, Cy Wong’s grandfather, married a mixed-race Native American woman of Choctaw and black ancestry, and Wong’s father married a woman of Chickasaw and black descent. Wong, president of the Chinese Historical Association of Southern California, acknowledges that some people have difficulty accepting his Chinese identity. “From time to time, I have had to deal with prejudices, especially from some African Americans,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “They’ll say, ‘well, you may look a little Chinese, but you’re still black.’ I’m not denying that my pigmentation is dark, but the true color of a man is what’s on the inside.” When asked, “Who are you, and where are you from?” Cy Wong responded, “I am a descendant of an African native, a Chinese native, and a native American Indian. But my nativity is American. I fought for America. I spent six years for America in the Navy. I am a true American.”

  And then there is Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain, whose great-great-grandfather, a Chinese herbalist, came to America in 1867. With her freckles, pale skin, and red hair, See does not look Chinese, but she has many stories to tell about her Chinese ancestors on the western frontier. Even though her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother were all white, Lisa See grew up culturally Chinese, spending much of her childhood in her family’s antique store in Los Angeles Chinatown. As an adult, she was astonished to find that others did not view her as a Chinese American. “Many of the Chinese people I interviewed talked about Caucasians as lo fan and fan gway, as white people, ‘white ghosts,’ ” See wrote. “Often someone would say, by way of explanation, ‘You know. She was a Caucasian like you.’ They never knew how startling it was for me to hear that, because all those years in the store and going to those wedding banquets, I thought I was Chinese. It stood to reason, as all those people were my relatives. I had never really paid much attention to the fact that I had red hair like my [maternal] grandmother and the rest of them had straight black hair ... Though I don’t physically lo
ok Chinese, like my grandmother I am Chinese in my heart.”

  Once the rare exception, multiethnic Americans like Cy Wong and Lisa See are rapidly becoming the norm. Between 1969 and 1989, the number of children born to Chinese-Caucasian couples more than tripled. In 2000, scholars estimated that there were some 750,000 to 1 million multiracial Asian Americans in the United States.71

  Mixed-race Americans of Chinese heritage have also achieved celebrity status, pushing the issue of their ethnicity into the spotlight. Tiger Woods, the world-famous golfer, has described himself as “Cablinasian” to embrace his white, black, Indian, Thai, and Chinese roots. And in Hollywood, a growing number of stars—Keanu Reeves, Russell Wong, Meg Tilly, Kelly Hu, Tia Carrere, and Phoebe Cates among them—are part Chinese.72

  While some racially mixed Americans have retained their Chinese culture, others have taken on a brand-new identity. Many children of white-Chinese unions are now calling themselves “Hapa,” a word that originated in Hawaii to describe the children of white merchants and native Hawaiians. Later, it referred to those with half-white, half-Japanese heritage, and now it is commonly used to describe all mixed-race people of some Asian ancestry. Hapa organizations have proliferated on college campuses such as Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Washington. Indeed, Hapas are now coming into their own as a political force and a burgeoning social movement: Hapa conferences, a Hapa magazine (MAVIN), and Hapa social clubs. Universities even offer courses in Hapa history.