Artwork by Siri Raghunayakula
Context
The Southern Pacific Railroad began construction in 1869, entering the Arizona border in 1877. The railroad years saw the highest population of Arizona Chinese in the late 19th century. From an initial interpretation of American race relations, it appears that the Chinese escaped overt racist treatment in this region by uniting their communities and finding success in certain businesses which eventually dominated the local economy. A closer look reveals that the Chinese only advanced in a narrow, nonthreatening field that almost entirely benefitted the White community, questioning the coincidences of Chinese employment. When Chinese sought higher paying, widely desired careers in mining, they faced exclusion and were eventually pushed out from the industry to leave jobs for Whites. I argue that the Chinese did not flourish in their niche market of restaurants, groceries, and laundromats in spite of discrimination, but rather that Whites forced them into those careers, which simultaneously benefitted White Arizonans and protected White employment.
Immigration to Arizona
Many of the first Chinese in the Southwest were sojourners: men who immigrated for solely economic opportunity, not for permanent settlement in the U.S. They came alone, saving their money to eventually return to China and support families there. This identity was crucial to their reception and treatment throughout their history in Arizona, which we will examine later in the context of Arizona race relations.
Chinese relationships were crucial to immigration patterns; they determined settlement locations and ensured economic support for Chinese-owned businesses. When the first Chinese businesses opened, they were almost exclusively patronized by other Chinese. These businesses were frequently farms, grocery stores, and restaurants; Chinese farmers dealt in primarily produce – fresh harvest. Before the Chinese, most American farmers were grain farmers, so the emergence of vegetable farms was a welcome development in the Southwest. However, the tolerance, even eagerness, of White Arizonans to support Chinese agricultural commerce despite their own inactivity in the market foreshadows a long-term manipulation of Chinese labor for Whites’ benefit. Chinese dominance in these industries is not a product of their luck in a random career, but rather the effect of deliberate White attempts to protect the most lucrative jobs for themselves.
The White Response
As historian Beth Lew-Williams argues in her seminal novel, The Chinese Must Go: The Making of the Alien in America, “When we use Black oppression and Indian extermination to define racial violence, Chinese expulsions seem [un]significant, or even more accurately, they appear not to be violence at all.” And while this is true – White Americans have always prioritized the suppression of Black and Native communities – the difference in treatment of Chinese Americans highlights nuances to their motivations and methods of removing Chinese from American society.
There are multiple examples of the explicit violence endured by the Chinese American community; White mobs seized by frenzy frequently went on mass lynchings of Chinese. In 1871, a Los Angeles massacre left 18 dead, while in 1880, angry Whites destroyed almost every Chinese house and business in the Denver area. However, Brent Campney’s thesis, Anti-Chinese Violence and International Diplomacy in the American West, argues that more often than not, Whites targeted Chinese through “subtler forces of coercion, harassment, and intimidation.” This was not a coincidence, though — Whites were not simply ignoring the Chinese in favor of targeting other minority communities. There was undoubtedly an underlying cause which encouraged Americans to avoid such distinct violence: trade relations with China. Beginning in 1899, the “open door” policy of equal trading rights with China between Japan, the United States, and several European powers marked a new age of commerce with the East. The United States hoped to utilize this new market for its full potential for export profit.
Foreign governments possessed a large influence over incidents of violence against Chinese Americans, putting pressure on American officials to constrain their citizens. Campney explains that America’s desire to remain favorable to the Chinese government was so public that even “’ordinary whites’ understood, at least in some vague sense, the importance of international trade with a weak but immense China.” The Chinese government was also active in ensuring their citizens would not be attacked without consequence. Whites understood that Chinese leaders could investigate acts of brutality against their nationals and covertly retaliate, putting the security of the U.S. government at risk. Therefore, Chinese diplomatic interference stifled a significant amount of anti-Chinese mob violence and “forced [Whites] to ‘choose’ the ‘subtler’ acts of violence against this minority rather than those employed against others.” In fact, the opinion of the U.S. government can be summarized in the following excerpt from an 1886 issue of The Tombstone Daily Epitaph.
It will need the best efforts of our greatest minds to pilot us safely through the dangers that now threaten. Meantime, it will be well for communities throughout the country, to act with caution and avoid throwing unnecessary difficulties in the way of the national government.
The United States’ foreign relations at this time draws a similarity to its inhabitants’ view of Chinese Americans. The U.S. feared China and its capacity to complicate policy in the case of violence against Chinese Americans, yet still hoped to use China for its ability to bolster American markets. Likewise, White Americans feared Chinese immigrants who had integrated into society – for stealing their jobs, for threatening White homogeneity, simply for being unknown. But that fear did not stop Whites from exploiting Chinese businesses and benefiting greatly from their labor.
For early Arizona Territory, there were few industries as profitable and competitive as mining. Before colonization of the area, Native Hohokam, Ancestral Puebloan, and Mogollon peoples mined copper and silver, turquoise, and other gems and metals. In the 1880s, as construction of the two transcontinental railroads finished, thousands of rich silver mines were discovered throughout the territory, sparking a huge boom of exploration and migration to mine the deposits.
Evidently, mining held a unique potential for wealth. Chinese Arizonans, newly unemployed after the completion of both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, faced strong exclusion when attempting to find work in the mines. Those who did saw segregated labor, relegating the least favorable tasks to nonwhite miners. Companies placed the Chinese in positions where they would complete work “even Mexicans cannot be got to do,” allowing only their workers of color to suffer through the worst conditions. They became “muckers,” removing debris on the floor of the mines as White workers broke the rocks overhead. Others cleaned out the latrines. Eventually, most Chinese left for better treatment, but just as in the mining industry, when Chinese sought jobs in other sectors of the economy, the only work they could find was in labor that Whites could exploit.
The most popular Chinese-owned businesses in Arizona were restaurants. The cuisines varied by location, but most served American-style food to cater to the larger Arizonan population. These businesses faced little white competition, and “despite racial prejudices, most people found the best restaurants were always Chinese-owned.32” While complaints and threats were frequent, Chinese restaurant owners experienced nowhere near the levels of open disdain, humiliation, and near abuse Whites directed at Chinese miners. Indeed, “The Phoenix Gazette frequently bemoaned the fact that the Chinese controlled the laundry, restaurant, and vegetable gardening businesses, but no one apparently cared to open competing businesses” (Murray and Solliday).
It can be inferred that the primary reason for White “indifference” toward these domestic industries was the realization that Whites could take advantage of immigrant shops. Often, prices were cheaper at Chinese-owned stores, and Chinese shopkeepers did not question their White patrons. Chinese businesses were beneficial to Whites; there was little motivation to run them out of town. Also, “meek” Chinese jobs dealing in food and clothing services did not threaten the employment and wages of Whites, who did not seek work in these fields.
While the Chinese could not break into more competitive industries, they could find employment in businesses that enforced the economic and racial hierarchies of Arizona. Whites disguised their exploitation of Chinese families as encouragement for domestic careers, but in reality, they simply did not want Chinese to “take” their jobs. We often think of Chinese groceries, laundromats, and restaurants as symbols of resistance against discrimination and exclusion. But they are not — they are symbols of white supremacy in effect.
Conclusion
For Chinese Arizonans, the experience of racism could have undoubtedly been much worse. Compared to the extreme hostility and open violence the Chinese experienced in Mexico, the subtler forms of ostracism in Arizona — excluding Chinese from better pay, closing Chinese businesses, frequent journalistic attacks on the community — question the motivations behind American “restraint.”
The commodity of Chinese labor limited the productivity of explicit violence, or even murder. Chinese were most acceptable when they were serving Whites, no matter if it was the cheap diner food Chinese Americans readily offered to Whites or the potential to grow the United States’ global influence through foreign trade with China itself. Sojourners were so disliked because they showed little reverence for White American society. These were the Chinese who dared to use the American economy for their own benefit with no intent of adopting Whiteness or American tradition.
Perhaps it was White insecurity or fear which incentivized them to corral the Chinese into a non threatening sphere of “docile domestic [servitude]” (Bloch and Ortoll), or perhaps entitlement and a long-standing tradition of nativism. Regardless, it is important that we reexamine the lens through which we analyze early Chinese conduct in the U.S. We must account for the societal power that White Americans possessed, despite their immense self-control in not executing mass killings of Chinese. The so-called tolerance for the Chinese was a strategic choice, one which kept the Chinese in a permanent position of subservience and Whites in a position to further exploit.