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CHAPTER 4 Fighting for Their American Rights: A History of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance SUE FAWN CHUNG By THE 18905 MANY AMERICAN-BORN CHINESE EDUCATED IN the American public school system had become adults. Their numbers had risen from a mere one percent of the total Chinese-ancestry population in the United States in 1870 to eleven percent in 1900 (see Table 4.11. In San Francisco, the proportion was even higher: the 4,767 American -born Chinese represented 34 percent of the Chinese-ancestry population in that city.l Fluent in English, these young men and women coming of age had greater potential for contact with the surrounding Euro-American community. Brought up in the United States, they also had a greater desire to interact with the majority society and to participate in the American political process. Some had acculturated to such a degree that they felt uncomfortable with the conservative, China-oriented segment of the population; others, raised among Euro-Americans, could not even identify with the other Chinese.2 The latter, for their part, often referred to the new generation derisively as "ABCs" (literally "American-born Chinese" but implying "brainless" or ;uk sing [in Cantonese , literally the hollow part of a bamboo stalk but meaning "empty" or "useless"1l.3 A generation gap consequently developed between the immigrant generation and their progeny. Members of the two generations, however, had encountered one thing in common: racial discrimination. Though Americans by birthright, fluent in English, and familiar with American culture, most, if not all, of the native-born Chinese Americans had nevertheless experienced some form of racial discrimination. The effects of the anti-Chinese movement Copyrighted Material 95 TABLE 4.1. Nativity of Chinese Males in the United States, 1850-1950 Total Foreign Native Total Native Foreign Year Population Born(%) Born(%) Males Percent Born Percent Born Percent 1850 758 1860 34,933 33, 149 95 1870 63,199 99 1 58,633 93 308 58,325 92 1880 105,465 98 2 100,686 95.5 648 100,038 95 18

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