Asian American Racism— An Erased History

 


    The topic I’m choosing to write about for the fourth Writ essay is the Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871. The problem with Chinese American racism, or with Asian American racism in general is less of a “twisted history” or “misrepresented history” issue, but more so that it’s not acknowledged or taught as much as it should be, resulting in Asian American racism today not being addressed seriously. Based on my personal experience, and many of my Asian-American peers’, Asian American racism is easily dismissed “as a joke,” and a suspecting cause of this phenomenon is that the history of Asian American discrimination isn’t acknowledged as much as it should in schools, and in society in general. 

    The Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871 started off when a shootout in Chinatown started, and a white police officer was killed. Groups of white men soon gathered and destroyed 1.5 million dollars of property owned by Chinese-Americans in China town, murdered 10 percent of the entire Chinese American population in the city, and proceeded to erase this incident from history books. 

    Talking about incidents like these in history books is not only necessary to remember the victims of the attack, but also to awknowledge the presence of Asian-American hatred and racism that’s been prevalent in this country for hundreds of years. This can help people take Asian-American racism occurring in today’s society more seriously, instead of brushing it off as a light-hearted joke. 

Comments

  1. TgibbsApril 3, 2022 at 9:31 PM

    Based on what I've read here, this incident reminds me of Black Wall Street and the massacres that occurred there. I've lived in the Los Angeles area my whole life and I have never heard of this topic and that's definitely a problem, so I'm glad that you're covering it. I look forward to reading and learning more!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lucas MinApril 10, 2022 at 10:24 PM

    Really love this topic!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maya Writ 150April 28, 2022 at 3:17 PM

    This event is such an underreported one, and I think its great that youre talking about it. I would love to see how you relate this to the chinese worker camps on the railroad system, i think these two events are very intertwined.

    ReplyDelete

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