Asian American activism broadly refers to the political movements and social justice activities involving Asian Americans. Since the first wave of Asian immigration to the United States, Asians have been actively engaged in social and political organizing. The early Asian American activism was mainly organized in response to the anti-Asian racism and Asian exclusion laws in the late-nineteenth century, but during this period, there was no sense of collective Asian American identity. Different ethnic groups organized in their own ways to address the discrimination and exclusion laws separately. It was not until the 1960s when the collective identity was developed from the civil rights movements and different Asian ethnic groups started to come together to fight against anti-Asian racism as a whole.
While racism has always been its main focus, Asian American activism has started to cover a more diverse range of issues such as women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, labor rights, criminal justice, affirmative action, and climate change in the past decades. The increasing heterogeneity of the Asian American population has further diversified the Asian American activism scene, as various new organizations emerge and new alliances are formed both within and beyond the Asian American community. Asian Americans have sought to effect social and political changes through legal means, strikes and rallies, literature, petitions, political campaigns, and even social media.
Background of early activism Early Asian American activism was mainly in response to the racial discrimination they faced in the United States. The early immigrants faced widespread discrimination and were denied many of the same rights and benefits as white Americans. This is due in part to citizenship in the United States was defined through terms of race and gender, in particular, only white males could become citizens. From 1850 to 1952, exclusionary laws and policies, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, Alien Land Laws, Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 and Immigration Act of 1924 prevented Asian Americans from gaining citizenship and the various rights and protections citizenship included.
In addition to discriminatory legislation, anti-Asian sentiments have existed in the United States and acts of violence have also been committed against Asian Americans ever since the first wave of immigrants arrived in the United States. Asian immigration mainly started with the discovery of gold (see California Gold Rush), California statehood, and work on the transcontinental railroad in the late 1840s, which was when discrimination and violence against the Chinese in America spread. Violent acts against Asian Americans, like the one which occurred in October 1871, when a mob murdered 19 Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles (Chinese Massacre of 1871), in July 1877, when a crowd in San Francisco burned much of the city's Chinatown (San Francisco Riot of 1877), when miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killed at least 28 Chinese in an 1885 massacre (Rock Springs Massacre), and when thirty-four Chinese miners were ambushed and murdered along the Snake River in Oregon in 1887 (Hells Canyon Massacre) have often been tolerated by American citizens and government.
Anti-Asian racism and violence were not limited to Chinese immigrants because later Japanese, Korean, Indian and Filipino immigrants were also treated with similar hostility and hate and subjected to attacks by the white-dominated American society. For instance, with the popularization of the "Yellow Peril" narrative, multiple Japanese restaurants and bathhouses were vandalized by a group of white supremacists in San Francisco in May 1907. In the same year in Bellingham, Washington, about 200 South Asian workers were evicted from their own houses and put into jail by a mob of white men. In 1913, when eleven Korean laborers arrived in Hemet, California by train, a mob of over a hundred furious white men threatened to use violence to force the laborers to leave the town, mistaking them for Japanese. Similarly, acts of violence against Filipino Americans also increased in the late 1920s when an attack on a Filipino dance hall in Watsonville by 400 white men was sparked by the publication of a photograph that showed a white teenage girl embracing a Filipino man.
In the face of extensive racial violence and exclusion in the United States, Asian Americans have not been passive or submissive to the status quo. Despite the socioeconomic and political restrictions which were imposed on them, they have constantly sought to find different means to challenge white supremacy and resist racism. Asian Americans lamented the harsh regulations and discrimination which had been imposed upon them by the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943) and the Angel Island Immigration Station (1910–1940). Angel Island detainees turned to silent protests by writing poetry, often bitter and angry in nature, on the walls. They also constantly challenged the exclusion laws by bringing cases to court and arguing for equal rights. Moreover, in face of labor exploitation, Asian laborers went on strikes and protests to demand higher pay and better working conditions. Although the Asian American identity did not develop until the 1960s, different Asian ethnic groups formed their own social and political groups to fight against discrimination and exclusion.
History
Asian exclusion era (1882–1952) Amid the industrial capitalist expansion, a large number of Asian immigrants were admitted to the United States to fulfill the labor shortage. The majority of them were worked as manual laborers such as plantation workers and railroad workers for long hours and a small amount of pay. In response to the influx of Asian laborers, there has been a growing nativist hostility towards Asians in American society, which transformed into prevalent anti-Asian discrimination, violence and eventually exclusion laws. In face of the labor exploitation and exclusion, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese and South Asian immigrants actively resisted through legal means, strikes and protests, and letter writing to show they also deserved U.S. citizenship and protection of rights as White Americans. At the same time, despite being in the United States, many Asian immigrants maintained close ties to their home countries by actively participating in homeland politics such as independence movements and suffrage movements.
Chinese
In response the rising anti-Chinese sentiment and labor agitation of White workers during economic recessions, a series of exclusion laws targeted at Chinese were passed from the 1870s to 1890s, such as Page Act of 1875, Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the Geary Act of 1892. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 specifically barred Chinese laborers from entering the country. For those who already settled in the United States, they were also restricted from reentering if they had left the country. In addition, this Act also made Chinese permanent aliens by excluding them from U.S. citizenship.
Chinese Americans have sought various ways to challenge the exclusion laws. Several civil rights organizations were created by Chinese Americans to fight against the Chinese Exclusion Act and Geary Act. For instance, Chinese American Citizens Alliance testified before congressional committees about Chinese-American rights, and the Chinese Equal Rights League published a pamphlet condemning the exclusion policies and their denial of Chinese citizenship. In addition, the first Chinese-language newspaper in the United States,The Chinese American, was established in 1883 to raise awareness of the racism against Chinese and unite the Chinese American community.
Moreover, Chinese Americans directly challenged the exclusion policies by circumventing the restrictions and bringing the cases to the courts. They adapted their migration strategies and exploited the loopholes in the laws. Knowing that foreign-born children of Chinese-American citizens were entitled to American citizenship, many Chinese fabricated paper documents to claim to be the offsprings of Chinese Americans to enter the U.S. and obtain citizenship. Others took advantage of the checks and balances of the American political system by using litigation in the federal courts to combat the forces that opposed their entry. They hired highly experienced attorneys and chose the courts that had the most favorable rules or laws for Chinese immigration. As a result, thousands of Chinese immigrants successfully entered the US through the writs of habeas corpus issued by the courts.
The Chinese resistance was not limited to the American continent and had expanded to many other regions in Asia. The Anti-American Boycott, or the Chinese Boycott of 1905, which spanned from 1905 to 1906, was an internationally coordinated boycott of U.S. goods and services which was staged in order to protest against the Chinese Exclusion laws in China and a handful of cities in Southeast Asia. Primarily, the boycott focused on the enforcement of the laws by the Immigration Bureau, which sought to deny entry to Chinese people who were legally exempted from the law, such as diplomats, merchants and their relatives, students and tourists. On May 10, 1905, the Shanghai Chinese Chamber of Commerce called for a boycott of American goods if certain conditions were not met regarding immigration and trade policies. The conditions were not met, and that summer, a unified boycott spread to ports up and down the Chinese coast. Throughout the boycott, Chinese consumers refused to buy, merchants refused to sell, and dockworkers refused to handle exports from the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt attempted to soothe Asian American frustration by issuing an executive order which required the Immigration Bureau to uphold U.S. laws and respect the entry rights of the exempted classes; however, no meaningful legislation was passed in support of new Chinese-American immigration laws.
Korean Similar to Chinese immigrants, Korean also faced prevalent discrimination when they came to work as laborers in the United States. The same economic logic was used to justify the exclusion of Korean because they were accused of stealing the jobs from the Whites. Like their Chinese peers, they contested the policy through legal means. In 1921, Easurk Emsen Charr, a Korean-born US Army veteran, petitioned for American citizenship on the basis of his military service in the US army. Although his petition was denied by the court on the basis that Koreans were "of Mongol family", this case was marked as one of the first significant challenges to exclusion laws initiated by Korean Americans.
Besides resistance to exclusion, Korean Americans also actively engaged in Korean independence movement. During the Japanese colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945, many Koreans escaped the country and sought refuge overseas, particularly in the United States. In 1909, Korean National Association was founded in San Francisco to advocate for Korean independence. After 1910, mass protests were organized by Korean nationalists in the United States to denounce the Japanese's annexation of Korea and call for unity against Japanese colonizers. At the rallies, protestors sang the Korean national anthem and waved Korean flags. When later the domestic Korean nationalist forces were crushed by the Japanese military, the Korean nationalists in the U.S., Mexico and China were able to carry on the independence movement. In March 1919, the Korean National Association organized the first Korean Liberty Congress in Philadelphia and published the Proclamation of Independence of Korea. The conference laid the foundation for the formation of the Republic of Korea in 1948.
Filipino