In Tucson, there were no Chinese crime lords, brothels or opium dens that fit the popular myths about the Chinese. Unlike Tombstone and Prescott, Tucson did not have an anti-Chinese league. It was safe enough that after 1900 Chinese men started to bring their families to live with them in Tucson. But that does not mean there was not racism toward the Chinese in Tucson.
The power of the Chinese Exclusion Act to wreak havoc on the Chinese in America from 1882 to 1943 should not be underestimated. Clifford Perkins in his “Reminiscences of a Chinese Inspector” said that one technique used was to get to know the local population of Chinese and when a new face appeared, to ask them for their papers or “chock chee” as they were called by the Chinese. The inspectors carried loose-leafed binders that contain the records of all resident Chinese or Chinese working in Tucson with them to compare with the records the Chinese person produced. If the appropriate records could not be produced or did not match, the person was taken in to start deportation proceedings. This is what likely happened to Don Wah in 1899 when he was asked for his identification papers in Tucson. When he could not produce them, he was arrested and jailed. He was released when his cousin, Don Yan, brought the papers to court. They were accepted and he was released.
Tucson’s Chinese lived and worked in mixed-race neighborhoods. They had groceries in the Mexican barrios, the African-American neighborhoods, and in areas that were Native American. Anyone of any race could and did shop in a Chinese grocery. Even Tucson’s white community did. So, how did racism rear its ugly face?
- Legally, the Chinese and other minorities could only marry within their own race . . . but that didn’t stop them. For example, Hi Wo and Emeteria Moreno were married in 1900. They had a market in Benson, AZ. In 1933 Lee Hop & Mary Trujillo were married. They had markets in Tucson. Chinese men married Mexican women by going to Mexico or New Mexico. Some were married only in the Catholic Church and did not get a license. The church’s only requirement was that the children be raised Catholic. It wasn’t until 1959 that an Asian American legally married an Anglo, and only because they went to court.
- There were derogatory terms used in the local newspapers to refer to the Chinese. On May 18, 1907, a lovely article about Hoy C. Don, son of grocer Don Yan, appeared in the Tucson Citizen. His father had just brought him and his mother to the United States, and the 8-year-old was so taken with his American school, he didn’t want to leave for summer vacation. The title of the article was “”Little Chink Wanted No Vacation: Mite of an Oriental Who Would Have Been Willing to Continue Attending School.” The word “ch*nk” is very offensive and shocking when used in this context.
- Chinese children would play with friends in the mixed-race neighborhoods where they lived but if a Chinese child had an African-American friend, they could not go to school with them because there was a separate school, Dunbar, for African-American children from 1913 to 1951. The Chinese children went to school with the Mexican and Anglo children.
- If a Chinese child had a Mexican friend and they wanted to see a movie at the Lyric Theater the Chinese child had to sit in the balcony, but the Mexican friend did not. If the Chinese child went to the movie with an African American friend, since both races were relegated to the balcony, they could sit together.
- The public pools in Tucson were segregated, so a Chinese child could go swimming with their African-American friends but not with their white friends.
- During World War II young Chinese men served in units with white, Mexican, and Native American men. African-Americans had to serve in the segregated African-American units.
- In 1952, the Chinese American veterans of WWII and Korea joined the Morgan McDermott Post 7 American Legion but by 1957 they had formed their own Legion post, the Don-Lee American Legion Post 66. One Chinese American American Legion member, Soleng Tom, rose in the American Legion starting the early 1950s until the early 1970s when he was nearly elected National Commander. The Mexican veterans had their own American Legion (the Spanish-American Legion) and Tucson’s African Americans also had their own American Legion known as the Negro American Legion.
- The Chinese and other minorities were not allowed to own homes in certain neighborhoods.
- John and Mamie Kai were not allowed to buy a house in a neighborhood which did not want any “Orientals” to move in.
- The Don Wah family were forced out of a neighborhood when “Chinks Out” was written on the side of the house they were building. The family also lost the $1,000 in earnest money they had put down on the house.
- The Alvernon Addition Codes Covenants & Restrictions, 1946: “5. No residential lot, or residential income lot, or any part thereof, shall be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in part to any person of Africian [sic] or Asiatic descent, or to any person not of the White or Caucasian race.” (The Alvernon Addition is on the northeastern corner of Alvernon and 5th Street where my husband and I owned a house years ago.)
- In 2007 Eggrolls Etc. was accused of racism in its advertising when this phrase was used: We really should charge more for delivery, old Chinamen are getting expensive these days. The Tucson Chinese Cultural Center became involved, then other local Chinese associations joined in as did the YWCA and Chicanos Por la Causa. The owner apologized.
- Now the Chinese, and other Asian populations, are known as the “model minority.” The phrase’s exact origin is not known but may date from as early as the 1950s.
- It assumes all “Asians” are the same, so, the Chinese are the same as the Japanese, as the Hmong, as Indians, etc. etc. when these are all vastly different cultures with different histories and languages.
- Stereotypical behaviors and expectations are attributed to the group; such as: excellent academic skills, having a studious, agreeable manner, being good at math and science, holding white-collar jobs in a health field, the sciences or law.
- In 2020, after the COVID-19 virus arrived in the United States, incidents of racism against East Asian and Southeast Asian people rose. The virus was also referred to as the “China Virus” for political effect.
Resources
Abbot, Carl. “The ‘Chinese Flu’ is Part of a Long History of Racializing Disease,” Bloomberg CityLab, March 17, 2020, viewed on 9/12/2022 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/when-racism-and-disease-spread-together
“Barrios and Barrios: The Tucson Civil Rights Era,” Arizona Public Media, 2011, viewed on 9/12/2022 https://youtu.be/xR56eG0fEOY
Gu, Winnie. “A Model Minority or a Chinese Virus: Which is It?,” Tenement Museum, May 21, 2020, viewed on 9/12/2022 https://www.tenement.org/blog/a-model-minority-or-a-chinese-virus-which-is-it/
Huang, Frankie. “How Living in China Dispelled the ‘Model Minority’ Myth for Me,” SupChina December 23, 2019, viewed on 9/12/2022 https://supchina.com/2019/12/23/how-living-in-china-dispelled-the-model-minority-myth-for-me/
Jin, Connie Hangzhang. “6 Charts That Dismantle the Trope of Asian Americans as a Model Minority,” Special Series: Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, NPR, May 25, 2021, viewed on 9/12/2022 https://www.npr.org/2021/05/25/999874296/6-charts-that-dismantle-the-trope-of-asian-americans-as-a-model-minority