Strangers from a Different Shore

In these passages Takaki highlights the significant contributions Asian Americans have made to the US even as they were treated as perpetual “strangers.” Takaki reveals how Asian immigration shaped the country, beginning with the land and infrastructure itself. For instance, he emphasizes Asian workers’ role in establishing the fruit production that has remained a defining part of the landscapes and economies of states such as California, Oregon, and Florida. The erasure of their contributions illustrates the unequal conditions of Labor and Exploitation, in which largely white plantation owners are credited with shaping American history and industry while those who do the work—and provide much of the expertise that makes that work possible—are ignored. Many of the Chinese workers who came to California in the late 19th century were from farming families in the Pearl Delta of GuangDong, and they shared their knowledge with the white American landowners who employed them. According to historian Carey Williams, these Chinese farmers were a “vital factor” in California's transition from wheat to fruit production (88). Takaki explains, “Ah Bing in Oregon bred the famous Bing cherry, and Lue Gim Gong in Florida developed the frost-resistant orange that bore his name and that gave the state its citrus industry” (88).

Developing the theme of Competing Visions of the United States, Takaki’s central argument in this section is that Asian American history is inseparable from American history—that ignoring Asian American history means fundamentally misrepresenting American history. As a key example, he shows how Asian workers were essential to building the Central Pacific railroad, a massive project which connected states for travel and trade. The author explains that “12,000 Chinese were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, representing 90 percent of the entire workforce” (84). Because of this Takaki calls the railroad “a Chinese achievement,” writing that “[n]ot only did they perform the physical labor required to clear trees and lay tracks; they also provided important technical labor by operating power drills and handling explosives for boring tunnels through the Donner Summit” (84). Recognizing that histories of the US routinely erase the contributions of those who provide physical labor, Takaki points out that the Chinese workers also brought much of the technical knowledge that made the railroads possible.

In addition to these tangible developments, Asian Americans also shaped American culture by bringing their own customs and language to their new home. Takaki reflects on the cultural mosaic of Asian ethnicities on plantations in Hawaii. Collaboration between these diverse groups brought new foods, clothing, gardening methods, religious beliefs, and languages to the newest American state, resulting in rich cultural fusion that leant itself to a shared Hawaiian identity. Takaki explains, “As pidgin English became the common language in the camps, it enabled people from different countries to communicate with one another and helped them create a new identity associated with Hawaii” (168). The prevalence of Asian immigrants in Hawaii meant that they could “weave themselves into the very fabric of Hawaii” and in doing so create the beginning of modern Hawaiian culture (176).

This section of the book also explores The Law as a Discriminatory Weapon, detailing how the law was used selectively to oppress Asian Americans, and demonstrating how they confronted that discrimination. Takaki explains how labor laws, extra taxation, immigration restrictions, and other forms of legal oppression coincided with general harassment and violence. While the 19th-century United States was a difficult place for many to work and live, Takaki helps the reader understand how the government and employers singled out Asian immigrants as more readily exploitable than white Americans. For example, white American employers across a variety of industries paid Asian laborers a much lower rate than white Americans, allowing company owners to reap larger profits. Takaki explains that Asians were “paid less than their white counterparts in an ethnically based differential-wage system: the work was equal but the wages were not” (87). This racist wage system disadvantaged white workers as well, contributing to a system of Labor and Exploitation that benefited only employers: The presence of a lower-paid class of workers undermined white workers’ bargaining power with employers, exacerbating racial tensions and damaging working-class solidarity. Takaki points out that employers intentionally stoked racial divisions in order to drive down wages for all workers.

Takaki shows how social commentators and others in the media fueled this anti-Asian bias by scapegoating Asian workers for the lack of fairness in the labor system, and perpetuating negative stereotypes of Asians. For instance, author Bret Harte’s 1870 poem “The Heathen Chinee” includes a Chinese character who slyly cheats and beats a white man at a card game. In Progress and Poverty (1879), social theorist and economist Henry George complained of Chinese competition hampering workers’ wages and leaving white Americans unemployed. His was one of many analyses that scapegoated Chinese workers for the unemployment crisis. Other publications depicted Asians as ugly, lustful, predatory, or scheming, encouraging white American readers to consider Asians both intellectually and physically inferior, but also, ironically, as a competitive threat to their wellbeing and livelihood. These beliefs normalized hatred of Asian people, who lived in fear of harassment and violence: “We were simply terrified; we kept indoors after dark for fear of being shot in the back. Children spit upon us as we passed by and called us rats” (115).

Takaki highlights early efforts among Asian workers to organize and resist oppression and exploitation. When railroad workers struck to agitate for better pay, only to be starved out in their work camps by their employer, this seemingly unsuccessful labor action inaugurated a long tradition of Asian American activism. Takaki places this story in a continuum that also includes the numerous instances of Asian laborers on Hawaiian plantations forming unions and striking in an effort to improve pay and working conditions. Because of employers’ power and willingness to resort to violence against their employees, these forms of resistance were rarely successful in the short term, but they helped to foster reforms in the long term.

As advocates from the Asian American community defended themselves from negative characterization, they began the still-ongoing process by which Asian Americans would come to tell their own stories and define their own identities in opposition to the racist narratives imposed on them by white Americans. For instance, Chinese immigrant Norman Asing wrote a letter in the Daily Alta California chastising a public official for his racist rhetoric, writing:

[The Chinese] are possessed of a language and literature, and that men skilled in science and the arts are numerous among us; that the productions of our manufactories, our sail, and workshops form no small part of the commerce of the world…We are not the degraded race you would make us (112).

Chinese merchants in the US formed the “Chinese Six Companies,” a coalition that advocated for civil rights for Chinese people through lawsuits. These court cases gained Chinese immigrants the right to settle permanently in the US, though they were still ineligible for citizenship. By describing Asians’ resistance to exploitation and racism, Takaki shows how they fought against victimization and in doing so helped to modernize American labor laws, immigration policies, and the culture itself.