Garey Santano DB6

Among arguments made to exclude Chinese migrants, two that stood out from Luibheid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border, were a racialized conception of germ theory supported by the American Medical Association (p. 37), and the perceived “threat” to white male laborers (p. 34) as well as the nuclear family wherein each member has and performs their respective gender roles. In the text, Mr. Pixley testified expressing his concern for the white male laborer, “The true American hero is the man who takes his dinner out in his tin plate, works all day, six days a week, and brings his wages home for his wife to expend in the maintenance and education of the family, in their clothing and their protection.” Luibheid adds that these heroes are synonymous with “civilization and the U.S. nation” due their gender roles and “sexual arrangements.” The Chinese were singled out and perceived to lack these social constructs, therefore deemed unfit for American society and “unassimilable.” Chinese women believed to be sexual deviants, threatening to lure moral white men away from their families, leading them to disease and immorality.

Another argument put forth uses germ theory to say that Chinese people carried diseases that were particularly dangerous to white men, venereal syphilis, and should thus be barred from entering America. The American Medical Association’s racist stance can be summarized as follows, “The germ theory of disease provided an explanation of the manner in which an obviously inferior group might best a superior one, contrary to the natural laws of social Darwinists.” I thought it was ironic that the AMA would make such claims. Just two centuries prior, the first European settlers brought smallpox to the Americas, which devasted the population of Native American tribes. Medical professionals and government officials used this twisted concept of germ theory to not only declare that one race was superior to the rest, but also that these “inferior” races were dirty and diseased. This threat was to be kept out of the country, away from the moral white man and his nuclear family.

These ideologies and prejudices created dire circumstances for Chinese migrants in America. As explained in the film Carved in Silence: Inside Angel Island Immigration Station, some Chinese migrants who were confined in prison-like conditions would carve poems on the walls, play music, and knit to take their minds off of the anguish caused by their interrogators. Chinese detainees formed a group called the Angel Island Liberty Association, and its main objective was to relay messages from families to detainees to provide accurate information for their interrogation.

One of the most shocking things I realized while studying the material is that many of the immigration procedures that are in place today originated from racially motivated efforts to discriminate against non-whites, and in ways these procedures remain mostly the same. These techniques designed to subjugate Chinese immigrants are now applied to every immigrant, case in point at the Mexican border where families are separated and treated poorly. The racist stereotype that was birthed by the American Medical Association still rings through time in phrases like the “China virus.”