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

Chapter 3. Asian American Firsts and the Progress toward Racial Integration

85 chapter 3 Asian American Firsts and the Progress toward Racial Integration Jennie Lee earned the distinction of being the first Chinese and one of the first women to be a certified armynavy welder at the Douglas Aircraft Company.1 During World War II, Lee’s accomplishment was featured in newspapers throughout the greater Los Angeles area, as it captured the values and aspirations that the nation sought to promote. As a female welder, Lee personified the popular wartime propaganda about Rosie the Riveter, who fulfilled her patriotic duty by daring to work in a trade that was previously restricted to men. As Lee was also noted for being a Chinese Rosie, her participation as a racialized minority further affirmed how the nation was in need of and truly welcomed all able-bodied workers to contribute to the war effort. Lee’s distinction as the first Chinese Rosie illustrated how World War II had opened up the nation’s workplaces to women and to people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Unlike the Aryan supremacist ways of Nazi Germany , which led to the mass extermination of Jews throughout Europe, Lee’s certification as an army-navy welder showed the United States to be progressing toward the full realization of its democratic principles. As the mainstream media celebrated Lee’s accomplishment in relation to the nation’s war effort, the recognition it gave Lee helped to generate an ideal image of racialized minorities, especially those who were to be integrated into dominant society. News accounts drew on Lee’s personal interests (besides being the first Chinese Rosie, she was an avid fan of both 86 Asian American Firsts Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Brooklyn Dodgers) in order to advance the needs of the state. The media coverage suggested that Lee’s espousal of the Chinese Nationalist government, a political ally of the United States during World War II, and her familiarity with U.S. popular culture showed her loyalty and belonging to the United States, proof of the nation’s ability to secure broad-based support for the war effort. Thus Lee, as the first Chinese Rosie, was established as a model for the terms that made racial integration not just possible but also desirable. The postwar period saw a proliferation of celebrations of the first of a particular racial or ethnic group to achieve a level of social and professional distinction. The widespread attention that popular media paid to these pioneers marked the early Cold War years as a defining era that cultivated the culture of the first. Among the notable trailblazers was baseball legend Jackie Robinson; the signing of the Los Angeles–bred infielder to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 distinguished Robinson as the first black athlete to achieve major league baseball status in modern times. The list also included Judge Albert Armendariz Sr., founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who in 1947 became the first in his immediate family to pursue graduate study and the only Mexican American to be enrolled in the University of Southern California Law School. Like stories on the first that appeared prior to the postwar period, mainstream news features of the early Cold War years drew on the achievements of racialized minorities to shed light on the values and aspirations of the nation. These stories not only emphasized the importance of cultural assimilation for bringing about racial integration, they also showed that portrayals of racialized minorities as both willing and able to prove their desirability to dominant society helped to make desegregation a necessary goal. The sheer number of stories that adopted this approach imbued a sense of normalcy and expectedness to these viewpoints. In Robinson’s case, his success as the first black player in modern major league baseball entailed that he refrain from public drinking, smoking, and partying. It also required that Robinson be the one to always turn the other cheek when players dug their spiked cleats into his leg and when players as well as fans shouted racial slurs at him. As the Time magazine cover story on Robinson contended, these constraints were crucial because they not only garnered Robinson the respect of his peers, they also enabled his talent as a ballplayer to be the main thing that the public Asian American Firsts 87 focused on and the main thing that would ultimately win them over. Accordingly , even though the Time...