Chinese American Hero: Paul Fong
October 20, 2009
This is Week 30 of AsianWeek’s salute to Chinese American heroes, in strategic partnership with Chinese American Heroes, a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to documenting the contributions of Chinese Americans to America and the world.
Paul Fong, California State Assemblymember from Silicon Valley
This week we salute California 22nd District Assemblyman Paul Fong for his valiant and successful effort to pass ACR (Assembly Concurrent Resolution) 42 which offered a formal apology for California’s many years of passing discriminatory and inhumane laws specifically directed against Chinese immigrants.
Between 1851 and 1965, Chinese were treated to a range of official and unofficial discrimination - ranging from the denial of US citizenship for any Chinese immigrant, discrimination in our courts (a Chinese person could not legally testify against a white American) resulting in an open invitation for hate crimes and murder against the Chinese without any fear of legal punishment, miscegenation laws (for many years, a white woman that married a Chinese man lost her American citizenship), denial of property ownership rights (in California, legal covenants were included in most real estate contracts that prohibited the sale of the property to Chinese and African Americans). These laws have never been officially repealed, but are not enforceable today due to court rulings against discrimination.
The 1st generation immigrants who came to seek fortunes in the gold fields of California of 1849 were not welcome competitors. The California State Legislature imposed a miner’s tax that was intentionally high intending to make mining unprofitable. In some instances, unscrupulous white men with fraudulent government credentials collected the miner’s tax more than once on Chinese miners, secure in the knowledge that the California courts would protect the fraudsters.
The Transcontinental Railroad (TR) opened the American West to the rest of America facilitating the rapid development of the nation. California gold helped finance the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution that would make the United States into a global superpower.
Chinese immigrants offered their strong backs and work ethic to build the western half of the TR. They comprised the majority of the western work force that met the Irish workers building the eastern half. Toughened by generations of farming and hard work in China, the Chinese could swing a pick and shovel all day and were also small enough to slide and hang from ropes between tight crevices to plant the dynamite and nitroglycerine used to blast through the solid rock of Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Engineers that had thought the building of such a railroad would be too much for human endurance were amazed that it was built and so quickly.
Chinese paid a high price of these dangerous work conditions and died, not only from railroad accidents, explosives, animal attacks, and disease, but also by freezing to death in the icy mountain winters. Mr. William Chew, in research documented on the Chinese American Heroes website, found that in one shipment alone, 20,000 pounds of bones were delivered back to China, representing approximately 1,200 Chinese that had died building the railroad. There were never any thanks or recognition for their suffering and sacrifices. When it came time to take pictures of the “Golden Spike Ceremony” celebrating the completion of the railroad in 1869, not a single Chinese face could be seen among the white workers, government officials, and railroad executives.
Discrimination continued long after the railroad days of the 19th Century. Before World War II being Chinese meant that even if you earned a PhD from Harvard or UC Berkeley that you still wouldn’t be hired. For most Chinese, a PhD only meant that you could be a well educated waiter in a family restaurant, a brilliant laundryman, or janitor, just like your parents who’d never completed elementary school or learned how to read.
It was not until the 1965 Hart Celler Act that the doors were opened to Chinese and their families to immigrate to America in any significant numbers. In 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act had been officially repealed but only enough to let in 105 persons of Chinese ethnicity. Compare this to the 20,000 immigrants allowed from each European country. Moreover, the Chinese restrictions applied to everyone of Chinese descent, whether or not they were a Chinese, British, or Canadian citizen. With only 105 slots open worldwide getting on the approved list of immigrants meant someone had to be very rich and have the highest political and diplomatic connections.
While the Chinese suffered discrimination and murder it has to be recognized that other groups suffered even worse treatment. African Americans obviously have suffered for hundreds of years. Japanese Americans during their World War II internment lost practically everything. We must also note that our “blood” relatives, the Native Americans suffered perhaps the deadliest pains of discrimination of all. The horrific number of deaths Native Americans suffered from 1492 onwards led many popular publications of late 19th Century America to predict their imminent extermination. Thankfully that ultimate injustice never happened.
Assemblymember Fong deserves a big hand for his hard work in persuading the California Legislature for their apology to Chinese American for the many years of official discrimination that caused so much hardship and unnecessary pain. This voyage might be painful to revisit but it is necessary in hopefully preventing this type of behavior from happening again.
For additional information about Chinese American heroes, please visit the Chinese American Heroes website at www.chineseamericanheroes.org.
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