Critical Thinking Assignment: Alien Land Laws to In what ways does discrimination against Asians parallel anti-semitism? In what ways is this form of discrimination similar to, yet different from, discrimination against American Indians and Mexican-Americans? What structural factors explain the similarities and differences? To answer these questions, use the lecture notes, the textbook, and the excerpts below.

Alien Land Laws

Modified excerpt from: Nicole Grant. 2008. ”White Supremacy and the Alien Land Laws of Washington State.“ Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/alien_land_laws.htm

First arriving on the U.S. mainland in significant numbers in 1848, Chinese immigrants were drawn by the California gold rush and soon expanded out to other Western cities.[7] In Washington State, mining, salmon canning, and agriculture attracted Chinese workers. As work dwindled between seasons, many came back to Seattle’s “China Town.” In the spring of 1886 this ethnic enclave was enveloped and destroyed by a mob of disgruntled whites. Perceiving Chinese workers as a threat to their economic interests and generally harboring hatred of differences in culture and appearance, hundreds of whites rioted against the small Chinese population, temporarily displacing the community from the city.[8]

The hatred that ignited the anti-Chinese riot similarly imbued the drive for restrictive alien land laws that would culminate in the racist provisions of the Washington State Constitution. In fact, in the same year as the riot, a new law was passed by the territorial legislature that barred “aliens ineligible to citizenship from owning land.”[9]

The idea that some aliens were ineligible to citizenship based on their race was commonplace. The Immigration Act of 1790 prohibited Asians from naturalization and in 1875 Congress amended section 2169 of the revised statutes of the regarding naturalization to explicitly state that citizenship be available only to “aliens [being free white persons, and to aliens] of African nativity and to persons of African decent.”[10] Thus Asian immigrants were not to become American citizens under any circumstances.

By eschewing the “whites only” language of the naturalization laws, alien land laws were written in seemingly race neutral terms. The statute that was finally adopted in 1889 as Article Two, Section 33 of the Washington State Constitution read,

“The Ownership of lands by aliens, other than those who in good faith have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, is prohibited in this state . . . . Every corporation, the majority of capital stock of which is owned by aliens, shall be considered an alien for the purposes of this prohibition.”[11]

The upper classes generally supported the Chinese and defended them during the Seattle riots. They saw the need for laborers on the rails and in the mines and knew that Chinese could often be forced to work for less than whites, driving all wages down. Plus, some upper-class whites had business and personal relationships with the Chinese merchant class in the city, in addition to personal servants with whom they interacted. Working-class organizations like the Populists, Progressives and Knights of Labor, on the other hand, tapped into the resentment of white workers and famers and feverishly propagated the anti-Chinese hysteria and spearheaded campaigns for anti-alien land laws.[12]

White settlers felt a sense of entitlement, a notion that they should rightfully inherit the riches of the Northwest Territory. But by the late nineteenth century many working-class whites instead saw themselves as disinherited due to the rapid growth of corporate monopolies and the Chinese workers who they saw as unwelcome competition.[13]

The popular hatred towards the Chinese that this kind of thinking resulted in led not only to laws prohibiting land ownership but ultimately to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited further Chinese immigration nationally.[15]

While the Chinese Exclusion Act essentially put an end to Chinese immigration for the time being, it did not end employers’ desire for low wage labor in Washington State. With nearly seamless transition, Japanese immigrants were encouraged to come to the West Coast to work in many of the same industries that Chinese labor once dominated.[16] But the targeting the Japanese bore a different character, one not just of felt white superiority but also of white jealousy. It was the appearance of Japanese success, in farming and business, which enraged many whites.

In comparison to their Chinese counterparts, Japanese immigrants acted less like sojourners and more like settlers. This pattern occurred for a number of reasons. Prominently among them, Japan was becoming an important economic and military force internationally. The intervention of influential Japanese diplomats helped assure the rights of Japanese living in the United States in a way that the Chinese did not benefit from. For instance, Japanese women were allowed to migrate with their husbands.[17] Immigration by Chinese women had been severely restricted because single males needed less to get by on and could be paid less and forced to move throughout the region in search of seasonal work. Regardless of their ethnicity, all women who emigrated from Asia were treated with disrespect by white society at large and often were regarded as prostitutes.[18]

Japanese men were also employed as migrant laborers in the same industries as earlier Asian immigrants, but many Japanese families were different from earlier ethnic groups because they pursued agricultural labor in order to be able to settle in a community so that their children could attend school and the family could establish community ties with their Japanese neighbors. Getting started as farm laborers, many became farmers themselves, leasing their own plots of land and selling their own crops.[19] In woodsy western Washington, Japanese involvement on the farm often started in the logging stages.[20] When no whites would touch the logged land chock full of stumps, Japanese farmers would lease and clear that land to make farms. Subject to the alien land laws that prevented outright ownership, first generation Japanese, known as Issei, got their land by contract, share, or lease.[21]Later, their American born children would hold land in their names.

Japanese in Seattle also formed an ethnic enclave called Nihonmachi where they set up an array of shops and businesses. By 1910 there were 70,000 Japanese and 3,000 Japanese owned businesses in the United States, a ratio of one business for every 22 people. With hotels, restaurants, barber shops, pool rooms, tailors and shoe shops, the Nihonmachi in Seattle represented a self-sustaining economic community. [22]

All this success was met with white hostility, and this time the most vocal leader of the racist exclusion movement was not a member of the working class, but a wealthy publisher named Miller Freeman.[23] From 1909 until years after World War II, Freeman’s numerous publications, including the Town Crier and the Pacific Fisherman, spewed a nearly constant tirade against the “unasimilable Japanese.”[24] The largest and most mainstream organization that opposed Japanese land ownership was the America Legion. It used the “moral” argument that Japanese were taking the jobs of returning soldiers and farming land to which these soldiers were somehow entitled. The heat against Japanese residents in the Northwest sparked into flame during the economic crisis that followed World War I.[25]

Pivotal to the effectiveness of alien land laws against Asians was the fact that they were not eligible for citizenship based on their race. In 1922 Japanese immigrant Takeo Ozawa fought for his right to citizenship based on the fact that he was in every way a model member of American society. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court where the Court conceded that in most respects Ozawa was an ideal candidate for American citizenship: he spoke English, practiced Christianity, and supported prohibition. However, he was not white, and in 1922 this was what counted most.[43]

[Restrictions on Japanese entry into the U.S. typically followed after restrictions on other Asian nationalities.] The Gentlemen’s Agreement [1908] was an unofficial and undocumented treaty [stating that . . . Japan was to issue passports only to those who had previously been admitted to the United States [3]. . . . To further restrict . . . general Asian immigration, . . . The [Immigration Act of] 1917 . . . created a “barred zone” in Southeast Asia.[4] “The barred zone roughly included parts of China, all of India, Burma, Siam, the Malay States, the Asian part of Russia, part of Arabia, part of Afghanistan, most of the Polynesian Islands and the East Indian Islands.”[5] . . . [Seven] . . . years later, the Immigration Act of 1924 would end Japanese immigration. This act of Congress prohibited the immigration of virtually all aliens ineligible to citizenship. While not coming out and actually saying “No more Japanese,” the act was implicitly targeted at the Japanese. Chinese immigration had already been virtually halted in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act and while Koreans, South Asians and others were affected, they were not then major sources of immigration like the Japanese.

The movement in Washington State was part of a broader, national movement underway for over a decade to remove racist statues from state laws. In fact, Washington was one of the last states in the country with its alien land laws still intact. The origin of the white supremacist alien land law movement, California, had its own legislation repealed by vote in 1956.[53] Oregon’s law was fought through a court battle and repealed in 1949 when it was found that the law violated, “The principles of law which protect from classification based upon color, race and creed.”[54]

Certainly a lot had changed by 1966. Domestic opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam had intensified and the had reached its pinnacle in the South and was spreading to the Northern States with increasingly radical rhetoric. This time the voters pamphlet pro-repeal statement took a firm stance that the laws were a serious embarrassment to the state and were having a negative impact on international trade. The first name on the long list of endorsements was that of Boeing Company President William Allen.[65]

Fear tactics non-withstanding, the repeal movement captured its long awaited victory against the racist alien land laws in 1966. Asian immigrants making their way to Washington State in the new wave of immigration ushered in by the 1965 Immigration Act would no longer have to jump through hoops to own homes or buy land.

[3] Mark Lazarus, “An Historical Analysis of Alien Land Law: Washington Territory and State: 1853-1889,” University of Puget Sound Law Review, Issue 12, 203 [4] Lazarus, 211 [5] Lazarus, 206 [6] Douglas W. Nelson, “The Alien Land Law Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the West, 1970, Vol. 9, Issue 1, 46 [7] Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of (Little Brown and Company, 1989), 86 [8] Carlos Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, An Interpretive History (University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 156 [9] Lazarus, 220 [10] Charles McClain, Japanese Immigrants and American Law: The Alien Land Laws and Other Issues (Garland Publishing Inc, New York, 1994), 30 [11] Washington Constitution, Article 2, Section 33, 1889 [12] Nelson, The Alien Land Law Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century, 54; Douglas Pullen, The Administration of Washington State Governor Louis F. Hart 1919-1925, PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 1974, 226 [13] Carlos Schwantes, “Unemployment, Disinheritance, and the Origins of Labor Militancy in the Pacific Northwest, 1885-86,” Western Historical Quarterly, October 1982 [14] George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit form Identity Politics (Temple University Press, 1998), 3; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 13 [15] Takaki, 14 [16] David Neiwert, Strawberry Days, How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 14 [17] Takaki, 46 [18] Takaki, 47 [19] Neiwert, 24 [20] Neiwert, 12 [21] Takaki, 188 [22] Takaki, 186 [23] Neiwert, 20 [24] Pullen, 234 [25] Pullen, 233 [43] Ozawa v. the U. S., No.1—Oct. Term, 1922, “Supreme Court of the Untied States” found in Charles McClain, Japanese Immigrants and American Law: The Alien Land Laws and Other Issues (Garland Publishing Inc, New York, 1994), 31 [53] Alien Land Laws,Legislative Council 1961 Session, Special Report No. # 3, Japanese American Citizens League Papers , UW Special Collections. Acc #217-6, Box 14 [54] Namba v. McCourt, Supreme Court of Oregon, 185 Ore. 579, 204 P. 2d 569, March 29, 1949, Found in Daniel Johnson, “Anti-Japanese Legislation in Oregon, 1917-1923”, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 97, No. 2 [65]Official 1966 Washington State voters Pamphlet, 18, Government Archives at University of Washington Suzzallo Library

(Extract above from: Nicole Grant. 2008. ”White Supremacy and the Alien Land Laws of Washington State.“

Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/alien_land_laws.htm )

The Glass (or Bamboo) Ceiling Extract below if from: Jacqueline Ruttimann. May 29, 2009. “Breaking Through the ‘Bamboo Ceiling’ for Asian American Scientists” (AAAS/Science Custom Publishing Office at: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_05_29/scie nce.opms.r0900072 The face of the US scientist is changing: Asian Americans now make up 14 percent of the science and engineering work force, according to recent data from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which can be found at www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08. With these numbers one would expect a proportionate increase in leadership positions. However, this is not the case. In academia and federal institutes, Asian Americans encounter what some call a "bamboo ceiling," similar to what female scientists faced 30 years ago. A diverse group, Asian Americans comprise numerous ethnicities, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islanders. All lumped under the umbrella of the "," this community faces a number of misperceptions or stereotypes—some of which work in their favor and some of which do not. For instance, this group is viewed as being quiet, hardworking, family oriented, and good at math and science. They also are seen as passive and nonconfrontational. While this model minority myth has boxed Asian Americans in, it has also helped them obtain jobs. However, within this box, they usually face "sticky floors" when it comes time to ascend the upper ladder of an organization. . . . . [For example], . . . [the] numbers are very good in terms of overall participation rate, but drop further up the GS [governmental grade salary] scale," . . . . For instance, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2006, Asian Americans made up 13.49 percent of the work force and represented 10.16 percent of those with a rank of GS 13, 12.89 percent of GS 14, and 8.21 percent of GS 15. At the topmost or senior executive service level, they made up just 3.28 percent. As the NIH prepares to submit its . . . report, the latest 2008 numbers haven't changed much from those of 2006. While Asian Americans represented 23 percent of those holding tenure-track positions, they were only 12 percent of those at the tenure or senior scientist level. In the higher administrative positions the numbers further tapered off, with only 6 percent holding lab chief positions. Currently out of the 27 scientific director positions there is only one Asian American scientific director. There are no Asian Americans running any of the 27 Institutes, although one recently retired. Similarly, academia is not immune to the glass ceiling problem among Asian Americans. According to the Higher Education Report Card recently issued by the Committee of 100 (www.committee100.org/publications/edu/C100_Higher_Ed_Report_Card.pdf), a nonprofit Chinese American organization, Asian Americans account for 6.2 percent of faculty. . . yet hold only 2.4 percent of the 145,371 administrative positions in higher education. (Extract above is from: Jacqueline Ruttimann. May 29, 2009. “Breaking Through the ‘Bamboo Ceiling’ for Asian American Scientists” (AAAS/Science Custom Publishing Office at: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_05_29/scie nce.opms.r0900072 )

Buck Gee and Vish Mishra [state that] Asian Americans face significant challenges in 's high tech-workforce and are subject to a “glass ceiling” that stops them from climbing the corporate ladder to the C-Suite. On April 24th in an op-ed in San Jose Mercury News, they noted the discrepancy between workforce numbers and level of executive representation: "While the proportion of Asian-American high-tech workers in Silicon Valley has grown from 38 percent in 2000 to more than 50 percent in 2010, their representation on senior executive teams is only 11 percent.” (http://asiasociety.org/northern-california/silicon-valleys-asian-american- glass-ceiling )