Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War

Introduction: Asian American Racial Formation and the Image of American Democracy

1 Introduction Asian American Racial Formation and the Image of American Democracy Shortly after World War II ended, the President’s Committee on Civil Rights released its 1947 report entitled To Secure These Rights, which dedicated a section to discussing the injustice of Japanese internment. It noted that not since the days of slavery had the nation witnessed such a wholesale displacement and incarceration of a group of people. The committee worried about the implications of Japanese internment for the future of American civil rights and advised the federal government to explore other means to ensure national security that did not entail mass accusations based on national heritage.1 Besides detailing the injustice of Japanese internment, the committee called attention to discrimination against the Japanese, who were denied the right to citizenship by naturalization. It deplored the way this inequality had impinged on their economic opportunities, particularly through California’s 1913 Alien Land Law, which made it illegal for aliens ineligible for citizenship to purchase agricultural land or lease it for more than a period of three years. While the committee believed that a democracy could establish reasonable tests to determine an individual alien’s eligibility for citizenship , it nevertheless considered the racial qualification to naturalized citizenship an unjust rule, given that a standard based solely on race had “nothing to do with a person’s fitness to become a citizen.”2 To correct this 2 Introduction inequity, the committee recommended that the federal government go beyond adding Japanese to the list of exceptions to the whites-only rule that already included Chinese, Filipinos, South Asians, and persons of African descent. It urged the government to remove all racial barriers to naturalized citizenship. The President’s Committee on Civil Rights sought to explain why it was so essential to ensure civil rights for all in the postwar period.3 To that end, it pointed to the rise of a new world conflict, particularly the ideological battle being waged against the United States by the Soviet Union. In this emerging struggle, the Soviet Union disseminated stories on the rampant racism in U.S. society that proved U.S. democracy “an empty fraud” and in so doing, replaced the World War II propaganda of Germany and Japan that sought to accomplish the same. The committee beseeched the federal government to take seriously the way U.S. racism was becoming an issue in world politics. It echoed the concern of the undersecretary of state Dean Acheson that broadcasting the mistreatment of Asians and blacks in the United States was hampering the nation’s ability to build trust and cooperation with non-Western countries. The committee asserted that in this highly interdependent world, American racism compromised the security of not only the United States but also the world.4 Arguing that racism was undercutting the ability of the United States to be the leader of the “free world,” the committee looked to establish the importance of civil rights reforms to advancing the nation’s Cold War policy of internationalism and communist containment.5 It maintained that racialized minority integration was critical to reclaiming the legitimacy of American democracy and that this restoration could help contain the influence of communist ideologies and foster trust and cooperation between the United States and non-Western countries. In charting a new civil rights frontier, the committee did not merely map out what the federal government had yet to do to secure the rights of all. It also delineated a place where democracy and national security interacted and became mutually constitutive. The interplay between democracy and national security, between Cold War internationalism and communist containment, did not, however, simply hinge on racial integration, it also appeared to necessitate the suppression of those suspected of espousing communist beliefs. This explained why President Truman not only enacted measures to desegregate Introduction 3 the armed forces and the federal workforce, but also passed the Federal Employees Loyalty Program to oust suspected communists from the federal government. In this expanded framework, the inclusion of racialized minorities and the exclusion of political dissenters both functioned to promote the credibility of U.S. democracy. In this view, the federal government was influenced by the need to show the international community the nation’s commitment to democratic principles when it backed civil rights reforms. It further acted to safeguard the legitimacy of American democracy by supporting measures that limited the rights of those who...