Claiming America

6. "Go West...to China" : Chinese American Identity in the 1930s

C HAP T E R 6 IIGo West . .. to China": Chinese American Identity in the 1930S GLORIA H. CHUN IIWE WERE 'GHETTOIZED' WITHIN JUST THESE FEW SQUARE blocks," stated Thomas Chinn, who grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown during the 1930S. To enable members of the second generation like himself to "break out of the shell of Chinatown," he helped to found the San Francisco-based, English-language newspaper/magazine the Chinese Digest, which ran from 1935 to 1940.1 This publication served as a crucial conduit through which young second-generation Chinese Americans could voice their thoughts and feelings. The articles mirrored these young people's responses to and reflections on various issues and concerns, such as the Japanese invasion of China, the economic depression, their exclusion from the mainstream job market, the preservation of Chinatown against foreign entrepreneurial and cultural encroachments, and their involvement in the Chinese section of the 1939 World's Fair. The Chinese Digest, along with recorded interviews , memoirs, and autobiographical writings, provides a window into the lives and thoughts of American-born generations of Chinese in the pre-World War II years.2 How these American-born youths came to negotiate their identity is the focus of this chapter.3 I found little evidence to support the widely held assimilationist thesis, which states that second-generation members of ethnic groups generally identify with mainstream American culture and eagerly adopt and emulate its norms and values in the hope of being accepted. This perspective, predicated on the Euro-American immigrant model, cannot explain the experiences of those who have Copyrighted Material 165 166 Gloria H. Chun been marginalized as second-class citizens and rendered as the racialized Other. Unlike their European counterparts, who could change their last names and blend in, the American-born Chinese, by virtue of their physical appearance, had to contend with their already constituted identity firmly etched onto the minds of many Euro-Americans by both the print and visual media. The question of Chinese American identity was made all the more poignant by the fact that they were, as a rule, barred from the mainstream job market, rendered politically invisible , and socially segregated into Chinatowns. By examining and analyzing the "Great Debate of 1936" and Chinese American participation in the 1939 World's Fair, I show the complex processes involved in the formulation of Chinese American consciousness and identities in the 1930S. Social Isolation and Exclusion Before World War II, the Chinese in America were a largely ignored and forgotten people. Isolated from the larger society and racially segregated, most Chinese were concentrated in urban ghettos. "We were not allowed to come out and mingle with other people outside of our community. We were too strange and were even discriminated against physically," recalled Thomas Chinn.4 The emerging secondand third-generation Chinese Americans, who constituted more than half the Chinese American population by the 1940s, had a status imposed upon them by laws and various social institutions similar to that of blacks in the South. Outside Chinatown, Chinese Americans were customarily refused service in restaurants and cafes. A Chinese American could not lawfully marry a white person. "Oriental" schools were designated for Chinese pupils; the few who attended "white" schools were prevented by racial prejudice from participating in extracurricular activities and student organizations as well as from using public swimming pools, other recreational facilities, and social clubs. Those who desired to play sports, to dance, or to debate had to form their own clubs.5 Exclusion from jobs was even more pronounced, particularly during the Great Depression. American-born Chinese with college degrees and special training were largely excluded from mainstream jobs. As a result of such discrimination, along with the decline in tourism during the Depression, many were either unemployed or underemployed. The graduating class of 1936 at the University of California, Berkeley, inCopyrighted Material "Go West ... to China" 167 cluded twenty·eight American-born Chinese, many of whom had earned degrees in engineering, economics, architecture, optometry, pharmacology , and commerce.6 Few found jobs in the fields in which they had been trained because most firms refused to hire second-generation Chinese Americans, even if they were well educated and equipped with special talents. Nate R. White of the Christian Science Monitor reported a similar situation in San Francisco. He found that for some five thousand young San Franciscan Chinese there seemed to be "no future...