So a few years ago I was in Mexicali digging around in historical archives to better understand the significant Chinese-Mexican population there. The answer is American and Mexican anti-Asian racism.
I was profoundly shocked at the time to find out how deep it went.
I was profoundly shocked at the time to find out how deep it went.
I'm embarrassed at how clueless I was until then, but it was so buried beneath decades of "model minority" propaganda that I had not even thought to excavate the hidden history until I saw it in front of me. Here's one of my stories pressreader.com/canada/nationa…
Basically, Chinese (specifically Cantonese) immigrants were sought out in the late 1800s to help build railroads. They were thought to be the hardest workers and most family-oriented and whatever other traits that eugenicist garbage people were assigning to entire populations
Many had come to make their fortunes during the Gold Rush and stayed for the railroad work. But then they started to demand basic rights and dignity, so what's a country to do? pbs.org/opb/historydet…
This, of course. history.com/topics/immigra…
There were all sorts of breathless rumors spread about these new immigrants too. Opium dens. Rape and seduction of white women. Tunnels to smuggle drugs and people. And of course... disease. Sound familiar? These tropes have been used against "out-groups" for a very long time.
The Chinese Exclusion Act also created what came to be known as the Border Patrol (which came into being during another nativist push in 1924.) Early border agents were called "Chinese-catchers." nytimes.com/2015/09/06/boo…
Many immigrants quickly wearied of the racism but were reluctant to return to their home countries, so they crossed south into Mexico -- where the same tropes were popping up all over the place. This culminated in an awful massacre in Torreon in 1911: theparisreview.org/blog/2019/04/2…
So they moved north again, but were kept out by ever-harder border controls. So they stayed in Mexicali, right up against the border. The Chinese district in Mexicali is about one block from the border wall (yes, it already exists.)
As with every anti-immigrant fear, this was deeply rooted in psychosexual insecurities, which were magnified by one of Hollywood's first ever heartthrobs, Japanese-American Sessue Hayakawa. Yes, Japanese. But when did racists ever truly give a shit about country of origin?
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the beauty of this man though atlasobscura.com/articles/one-o…
Hayawaka went on to play Saito in Bridge Over the River Kwai
This made a lot of white Americans deeply uncomfortable. So Asian actors got edged out of Hollywood and replaced with white actors with taped up eyes and fake teeth, think Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's (which was incidentally right when I turned off that fucking film)
At the same time the idea that Asian people spread disease was ever more popular. It is a low-effort way to connect phenotype with disease to turn entire groups into social pariahs. washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02… 
So how did Asian people end up with the burden of being "model minorities" in the United States? That's an easy one. It was an attempt to split apart solidarity among nonwhite people during the Civil Rights movements in the late 1960s: npr.org/sections/codes…
It had the added "benefits" (to racists) of emasculating men of Asian descent and perpetuating a stereotype of "submissive" women of Asian descent. I don't think I need to explain how that would help racists
Oh yeah here's another story I wrote about this back in 2015 dallasnews.com/opinion/commen…
So let's not let it happen this time, huh? Call this lazy, cynical shit out whenever you see it.
The problem with negotiated identity -- as I am finding out in my own way right now -- is that it can change on a dime at the whims of people in power. It is a very unstable feeling and entirely preventable. It's also very useful to upholding white patriarchal norms
Oh yeah, so, against this backdrop can you see how the concentration camps for people of Japanese descent were both not at all surprising and a monstrous betrayal of the promises of an American Dream for all? They're in line with our history. And it's time to change.
I learned NONE OF THIS in school, despite spending much of my teens right on the U.S.-Mexico border in southern California. Granted, I dropped out of high school when I was 16 -- but no one I knew learned about this. I found it myself when I was exploring Calexico and Mexicali.
I just realized I said Bridge OVER the River Kwai and I meant ON, apologies for the screwup
