Unfound: The Princeton Journal of Asian American Studies - Volume 5, 2018

UNFOUND

THE PRINCE TON JOURNAL OF ASIAN AMERIC AN S TUDIES

2018 VOL. 5

LET TER

from from the the editors editors

Dear reader,

UNFOUND Editors-in-Chief

Editorial Staff

Angela Feng ’19 Ling Ritter ’19

Elijah Ash ‘19 Marina Cooper ‘22 Kathy Fan ‘19 Jacqueline He ‘22, Jasmine Li ‘22 Samuel Niu ‘19 Soo Young Yun ‘22

Faculty Advisor

Professor Anne Cheng

Managing Design Editor Catherine Wang ’19

Layout Staff Natalie Diaz ‘19 Jasmine Li ‘22 Rhea Park ‘22 Cindy Song ‘22 Kathleen Song ‘22

The year has seen growing waves of activism, emerging bonds of solidarity, and watershed Dearpast reader, moments for diversity in representation in areas such as the film industry and the political arena.

Yet ever-present seeds of divisiveness threaten the potential progress these achievements The past year has seen immense levels of political and social unrest taking place on represent and leave many Americans and marginalized communities in a state of continued various platforms, both old and new. We have seen the effects of a new administration uncertainty and precariousness. In times like these, it is crucial to remember the present on national and state-level policies. But far from just a bleak year of tension, we have implications of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We are caught in an inescapable network of also seen solidarity across groups of people, who have come together to hear each mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Our journal provides one way to remember and other’s concerns and share in each other’s triumphs. It is within this climate that the reexamine moments of conflict and coalescence that have been historically overlooked, work of identity construction for the sake of understanding ourselves and others whose recovering the unfound. stories may not be unlike our own has become increasingly important. Our journal is only a small part of one university’s efforts to do this kind of important work.

We are delighted to present to you four articles that relive historical conflict and explore the theme of revitalization through a mixture of legal, socioeconomic, ethnographic, and institutional This year we are pleased to present five articles, which explore vastly different topics and fields perspectives. One author investigates the 1995 Nassau Hall sit-in for Asian American Studies at of study within Asian American studies. We believe that these authors represent a new cohort Princeton, reviving the longstanding historical context of battles for greater diversity and of scholars ready to engage deeply, explore rigorously, and write passionately about the rich representation in academic coursework and faculty. Another author examines a Supreme Court aspects of the burgeoning field of Asian American studies. In the following pages, we hope you ruling that reinforced anti-miscegenation laws, deconstructing the Court’s concurrent racial will find arguments with a fresh twist. These articles certainly made our own staff think more attitudes and political considerations. We follow another author through the shifting economic critically about topics like the model minority myth and the role of the medical profession in the and sociopolitical dynamics behind Chinese migration to Monterey Park, California, and we opium epidemic. We followed an author as she explored all that Bruce Lee symbolized, another close with an ethnographic exploration of Asian American remembrance through filmic as he explored leftist ideology in Asian American communities, and yet another as she recounted documentation. and analyzed the student advocacy for Asian American studies at Northwestern University.

Unfound is situated within a rich history of Asian American activism at Princeton and across the Our journal began four years ago as a student-led initiative to show the interest in Asian United States. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the national Association for Asian American studies and the potential of undergraduate research. Since its inception, we have been American Studies as well as the 5th anniversary of Unfound, which was established in 2014 continually humbled by the privilege of being at Princeton University during a critical time for with the purpose of providing college students and recent graduates a forum in which they can American studies. This year has been no different. After nearly forty years of advocacy, students contribute to and learn from the growing body of scholarly literature in Asian American Studies. finally have a course designation with which to search for Asian American studies courses. While Princeton’s own Certificate in Asian American Studies launched this academic year. As we this may seem small, this course designation represents an institutionalized promise to Princeton’s celebrate these milestones, we also encourage the adoption of future measures such as students. The community can finally welcome a new junior faculty member, who will join expanding the range of Ethnic Studies programs available to students and implementing a Professors Anne Cheng and Beth Lew-Williams in teaching courses on Asian American studies. course requirement to study the intersectional dynamics of culture, identity, and power. Here at Through the generosity of Nancy H. Lin ’77, we can also celebrate the establishment of the Lin Unfound, we are grateful to bear witness to and to contribute to the deepening of a collective Family Endowment for Asian-American studies, which will provide valuable resources as American understanding of Asian American voices, identities, and visions. We welcome you on this studies and Asian American studies continue to grow at Princeton. This certainly has been a big journey with us. year for Princeton, and we look forward to being a part of this continued growth of scholarship.

Sincerely Yours, Sincerely yours, Angela Feng and Ling Ritter Angela Feng and Rebecca Weng

ABOUT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NAME

SELECTION PROCESS

The title Unfound refers to the ambiguities of the Asian American experience.

“Unfound,” in its most basic sense, simply refers to something that remains elusive. But the word connotes deeper, emotional meaning upon reexamination.

Unfound implies that there is something to be discovered. Unfound implies that someone has tried and tried again to find what she has been looking for, only to come up short. Caught between two identities, the Asian American seeks to carve out her own place in the greater American narrative. Asian American studies and Unfound seek to create a space where what has remained unfound can be discovered.

All articles submitted to Unfound go through a double-blinded selection process. Following blinding by our managing layout editors, articles are distributed to our selection editing team, of which our managing layout editors are not a part. Each article is read by at least two editors and graded according to a standardized rubric that takes into account factors such as quality of argumentation, quality of writing style, and quality of research. Following discussions between all editors comparing the relative merits of all submitted articles, articles are selected based on group consensus.

Eric Wang, The University of Chicago ‘20

SUBSCRIPTION PROCESS

SPONSORS

Reimagining the Gaps: Counter-Memory Making and Filmic Documentation

If you would like to subscribe to receive physical copies of Unfound, please email us at unfoundjournal@gmail.com and include your name, address, and institution (if applicable). A subscription fee will apply. Virtual copies of Unfound are available at unfoundjournal.com via ISSUU.

Unfound is a publication of the Princeton Asian American Studies Committee. This journal is possible due to the generous support of the Program in American Studies, the Asian American Studies Research Fund, and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students.

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“These Actions are Deeply Offensive to Me Personally”: Power Struggles between Students and the Administration during the 1995 Nassau Hall Sit-In

04

Stephen Chao, Princeton University ‘19

“A Love That Could Not Be Known”: Naim v. Naim and Chinese Citizenship in the American South PostBrown

14

Rachel Kim, University of Chicago ‘20

‘Stop All the Garbage Going Up’: Capital Flight, Immigration, and Suburban Development in 1980’s Monterey Park, California

26

41

SeungHyun Chung, University of Pennsylvania ’19

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“These Actions are Deeply Offensive to Me Personally”: Power Struggles between Students and the Administration during the 1995 Nassau Hall Sit-In Stephen Chao, Princeton University ‘19 This paper draws from archival materials and an oral history interview with former President of Princeton University Harold T. Shapiro to examine the 1995 Nassau Hall sit-in, during which 17 undergraduate students occupied Nassau Hall for 35 hours to call for greater resources for Latino and Asian-American studies at Princeton. Looking at the ways the administration handled the sit-in, I argue that the administration took multiple steps in order to wrest power away from the protesters. The administration, not necessarily with ill intent, managed this multiple ways: by having President Shapiro maintain a nearabsence from the protest proceedings, undermining the students’ attempts to grab his attention; by having the negotiating administrators dictate the terms of negotiation; and by framing the protest as redundant after it ended. Overall, the 1995 sit-in serves as one example of a power struggle between administrators and students in higher education.

When I first reached out to Princeton President Emeritus Harold T. Shapiro to ask if I could interview him about the 1995 Nassau Hall sit-in, which occurred during his tenure as university president, his email response was as follows: “I would be glad to participate, but this is a long time ago and I am not sure that all my memories are perfectly intact. Nevertheless if you are willing to proceed please call my assistant… and set up an appointment at a mutually convenient time.”1

Throughout our subsequent interview, much to my frustration, there were multiple times when Shapiro could not provide details surrounding the protest: Chao (C): “Do you recall, in terms of calls from students and faculty for Asian-American and Latino studies… who was picking up that issue [of finding ethnic studies faculty]? …

Shapiro (S): “I don’t recall. I mean, if you were to ask me to name the chairman of the department back then I wouldn’t be able to name it. If someone mentioned the name, I’d recognize it, but I don’t really recall specifics like that…

C: “Do you recall … the interaction between the students and the administration in following various channels … for ethnic studies and for diversity in the curriculum? …

S: “I don’t really recall that. I don’t really recall that. It may not have been directly with me, it may have been with the Dean of the Faculty or the Provost, I have no idea.”2 1. Harold Shapiro, ‘Oral History Interview,’ email, 2017.

2. Harold Shapiro (President Emeritus of Princeton University), interviewed by Stephen Chao, Princeton, NJ, 6 Dec. 2017.

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Of course, much time has passed between 1995 and 2017 (when I conducted the interview). Furthermore, both the sitin and the general movement for Latino3 and Asian-American studies at Princeton were only minor issues during Shapiro’s tenure as university president; he did speak at length about his reforms to Princeton’s financial aid and socioeconomic diversity.

Shapiro’s response to the second question above, however, points to another potential reason for his inability to recall details about the sit-in. Looking through the archival material surrounding the demonstration, which occurred from the morning of April 20 to the evening of April 21, I realized that Shapiro himself was hardly involved.

Although Shapiro was the intended audience for many of the people involved in the 1995 protest, his only actions during the sit-in seemed to be to release a statement condemning the protesters’ disruption of “the regular exercise of University operations”4 and to continue conducting his “normal university activities” at a location outside of his office. It was primarily other 3. Throughout the paper, I use the term “Latino studies” in reference to the terminology the students used at the time, as well as the name of the current Program in Latino Studies at Princeton. I recognize that the terms “Latin@,” “Latinx,” and “Latine” have arisen in the 21st century as part of efforts to make Spanish more gender-inclusive, as well as to center the experiences of trans and non-binary Latinx folks.

For more information, refer to Gamio, 2016.

4. “Statement by President Harold T. Shapiro,” 20 Apr 1995, Correspondence over Protest and Punishment 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

administrators, including Vice President Thomas H. Wright, Dean of Studies Nancy Weiss Malkiel, Provost Stephen Goldfield, and Dean of Student Life Janina Montero, who responded to the decidedly “abnormal” events of the protest by negotiating with the protesters during the sit-in and overseeing the university’s disciplinary actions in the aftermath of the demonstration.

To provide some context: the 1995 Nassau Hall sit-in was a protest led primarily by Latinx and Asian-American undergraduate and graduate students who were calling for increased resources and faculty for Latino and Asian-American studies at Princeton University. Although students had been working in conjunction with faculty and administration to increase curricula in Latino and Asian-American studies for at least a decade, the continued lack of courses and faculty pushed the protesters to conclude that the administration had not done enough to support these programs.

After about a week of planning, 17 students entered the office of Marcia Snowden, University President Shapiro’s secretary, in Nassau Hall and occupied it for 35 hours, while five other students served as negotiators with university administration.

The sit-in also received support “in the form of four rallies, a candlelight vigil, a campout, donations of food and supplies, and over 500 signatures in support of Asian-American

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and Latino studies.”5 Despite the protest’s support from some Princeton students and alumni, as well as from student groups at Cornell, Brown, UCLA, Stanford, and other schools,6 Shapiro’s absence from the protest proceedings sent a strong message that ultimately assisted the administration in delegitimizing the student protesters’ concerns and actions. This is not to say that the administration had malicious intentions towards the student protesters–in fact, from various accounts of the protest negotiations, it seems that administrators such as Vice President Wright and Dean Malkiel genuinely wanted to align the university’s actions regarding ethnic studies with the student protesters’ demands.7 Regardless of the administrators’ intentions, however, the administration’s actions constantly wrested power away from the student protesters.

First, Shapiro’s near-complete absence from the protest undermined the protesters’ attempts to make him the audience of their grievances. Second, the administrators present during negotiations kept the framework of discussion focused on their 5. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” Nassau (Princeton, NJ), 27 Apr. 1995, Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

6. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

7. Letter from Dean Janina Montero to Professor Edward Cox, 27 Apr. 1995, Correspondence over Protest and Punishment 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

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own concerns, refusing to concede to the students’ attempts to shift the conversation.

Finally, after the sit-in ended on the evening of April 21, 1995, the protesters’ efforts to frame their actions as influential and victorious were immediately undermined by statements released by Provost Goldfield. All these actions (and nonactions) demonstrate the struggles between administration and students to control the negotiations; time after time, the students lost out to the administration.

In this essay, I am less interested in examining the truth behind the various actors’ viewpoints and more interested in how these actors attempted to express these viewpoints–whether right or wrong–in ways that would grant them authority. In other words, the issue posed by this essay is not so much whether the administration or the student protesters were more correct in their perspectives on ethnic studies at Princeton as it is how the administration and protesters clashed in trying to put forth each of their perspectives. Furthermore, as I noted above, I am also uninterested in intent: from speaking with Shapiro and reading accounts of the negotiations, it seems that all parties entered discussion with good intentions. The lack of malicious intent, however, does not negate the impacts of both the administration’s and the protesters’ actions.

The first way the administration delegitimized the student protest of 1995 was incredibly subtle, yet effective: Shapiro himself was absent from most of the proceedings. Part of the protesters’

strategy with the sit-in was to confront Shapiro directly with their grievances. In his published account of the events, student protester Gabriel Benitez ’96 recalled heading “directly to [Shapiro’s] front door,” then, after finding it locked, to “the office of Marcia Snowden, the president’s administrative assistant.”8 Outside of Nassau Hall, protesters yelled chants such as, “A relevant education NOW! Wake up Hal [Shapiro], Wake Up NOW!” and “Yo Mister President, You’re supposed to REPRESENT! Yo Mister President, You gotta set a Precedent. Yo Mister President, remember racism 101?”9 Alumni faxed letters directly to Shapiro’s office.10 For the protesters, forcing Shapiro’s attention would be a greatly visible symbolic victory–after all, there was much power to be gained from commanding a response from the very top of the university hierarchy.

Shapiro, however, did not grant the protesters the response for which they were looking. Throughout the two-day protest, he and his two assistants simply continued their work outside their office. Shapiro’s motivation behind his actions during the sit-in stemmed from his belief that 8. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

9. “Chants,” Protest Materials 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

10. Letters to President Harold Shapiro, 21 Apr. 1995, Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

student demonstrations, regardless of their intentions, did not “justify the interruption of normal university activities.”11 As he noted during our interview, “I’m not going to have these conversations whilst normal university activities are being interrupted, so alright, you have those conversations later. Not that one shouldn’t be responsive if you thought the proposal or idea was a good one–I mean, students often have very good ideas.”12

The only direct action Shapiro did take was to release a statement to the university community on the first day of the protest, in which he wrote, “Earlier today a group of students pushed a member of my staff out of the doorway to her office, took over her office, and prevented the regular exercise of University operations. These actions are deeply offensive to me personally and constitute a clear violation of University policy… I am not willing to discuss these or any other issues while this inexcusable occupation of University office space continues.”13

The protesters themselves were quite aware of Shapiro’s absence. As one student wrote, “President Shapiro, in his press release of Thursday afternoon, stated that the takeover was ‘deeply offensive to me personally’. If he truly did take our action as a personal offense, however, why then was he absent from every single round of negotiations? … That Shapiro refused to be present at a single meeting with our five negotiators indicates a much 11. Harold Shapiro, interviewed by Stephen Chao, 2017.

12. Harold Shapiro, interviewed by Stephen Chao, 2017.

13. “Statement by President Harold T. Shapiro,” 1995.

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deeper unwillingness to discuss curricular diversity.”14

Whether or not Shapiro was actually unwilling to “discuss curricular diversity,” his absence spoke volumes. Despite the students’ attempts to draw a response from Shapiro and capitalize on the spectacle of the university president being forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of their demands, Shapiro steadfastly continued his own “normal university activities.”

This sent a strong message to the student protesters that echoed the administration’s overall approach to the protesters: the administration would not negotiate on the protesters’ terms, but rather on its own.

This approach is particularly visible in the discussions between the administrators and the student negotiators. Despite the protesters’ attempts to bring their own demands to the forefront of the discussions, the administration steadfastly confined conversation to its own framework. The student negotiators met with administrators about five times during the sit-in. The main administrators that the students met with were Vice President Wright, Dean of Studies Malkiel, Dean of Student Life Montero, and Provost Goldfield. The student protesters distributed their demands to their supporters outside Nassau Hall as well as to the administrators: these demands included four tenured faculty in Asian-American 14. “The sit-in – From the inside,” Correspondence between and with Protestors 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

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studies and Latino studies each, two fulltime visiting professors to teach courses on Asian-American studies, four AsianAmerican studies courses for the 1996-97 school year, and the creation of a Center for Ethnic Studies.15 Both student and administrator accounts of the negotiations indicate that most of the discussion revolved around the university’s existing efforts for ethnic studies and the urgency to end the sit-in. For instance, in an account of the sit-in submitted to the chair of the disciplinary committee responsible for assigning the student protesters’ penalties, Montero writes that during the first meeting with the protesters, which took place in the early afternoon of April 20, “Provost Goldfield, Dean Malkiel, Vice Provost Simmons, and Dean Katherine Rohrer described in some detail for the negotiators the plans and current initiatives regarding Latino and Asian American studies … and it was emphasized that the University would not enter into substantive discussions under the circumstances.”16 These two themes were repeated in meetings with the negotiators that evening, the next morning, and in the final meeting on the evening April 21.

Benitez, in his article for Nassau, corroborates Montero’s account, noting that,

mostly of familiarization with the efforts already underway [for ethnic studies], and discussion of each other’s position. The administration insisted that it would not put its position in writing, but that efforts underway would hopefully yield exactly what we were asking for. We took this information back to the students sittingin, and the consensus was that without a written guarantee of faculty in AsianAmerican and Latino studies, the students would not leave.”17

“the first day of negotiations consisted

As time passed, the administration repeated its assertion that “no agreement could be reached” while the students continued to occupy Nassau Hall, causing great tension amongst the sit-in participants.

Finally, the protesters agreed to leave Nassau Hall after receiving an open letter

by Provost Goldfield, in which he wrote about the university’s commitment to raising money for faculty with special interests in Asian-American and Latino studies, continuing support for visiting positions in Asian-American and Latino studies, and increasing the diversity of offered courses.18 This seemed to be interpreted by the protesters as a written confirmation of the administration’s commitment to ethnic studies. Benitez notes that “though there was great disappointment at the realization that our specific demands had not been met, [the protesters] came to the decision that it was better leave now with solid gains than

15. Demands of sit-in, Protest Materials 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

16. Letter from Dean Janina Montero to Professor Edward Cox, 1995.

17. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

18. Open letter by Provost Stephen Goldfield, 21 Apr. 1995, Correspondence over Protest and Punishment 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

to stay and possibly damage the relationship which we had just forged.”19 From both Montero’s and Benitez’s accounts–one from the perspective of an administrator, the other from that of a student protester–it is evident that throughout the sit-in, the administration undermined student attempts to control the points of negotiation. Though the administrators did emphasize how the existing efforts “would hopefully yield exactly what [the protesters] were asking for,”20 ultimately the administration dictated the terms of negotiation and generally refused to discuss the students’ demands while they remained in Nassau Hall. Even Goldfield’s letter, which both Benitez and Montero designate as one of the factors that led to the end of the sit-in, did not demonstrate any university commitment to the protesters’ demands. Rather, the students’ decision to leave after receiving the letter is the culmination of the process in which the students’ demands ultimately capitulated to the university’s existing agenda.

Goldfield’s letter lies at the heart of the third way the administration wrested power away from the student protesters: by undermining the students’ attempts to frame their sit-in as a victorious pivot point in the movement for Latino and Asian-American studies at Princeton. As noted above, after receiving Goldfield’s open letter, which was published in the Daily Princetonian student newspaper, the student protesters 19. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

20. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

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in Nassau Hall were encouraged by this sign of the university’s “written commitment” towards providing for ethnic studies. However, they also contested a few of Goldfield’s passages, making the following strikethrough on his letter’s opening paragraph: “Given the extensive discussion in recent days about the University’s plans for the areas of Asian American and Latino studies, I thought it would be helpful to summarize some of the steps we took earlier this year. One of the ironies of the recent protest is that these are areas where significant initiatives had already been undertaken.”21

The students were dissatisfied with this passage because from their perspective, the administration had not been historically consistent in its support for either Latino or Asian-American studies. The protesters’ viewpoint is evident in the way they justified their actions. One poster distributed during the protest asks, “Did you know … student efforts to establish Asian American curriculum here at Princeton have been pursued for over TEN YEARS???”22 Another poster regarding Latino studies asserts that “From 1986 until 1991, the Latino Task Force (a group of STUDENTS) met continually with administrators and faculty in an attempt to develop support for Latino studies. These 21. Students’ comments on open letter by Provost Stephen Goldfield, 21 Apr. 1995, Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

22. Flyer on Asian-American Studies Effort, Protest Materials 1995; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

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meetings accomplished nothing.”23 By contrasting their strong action with the administration’s seeming inaction, the student protesters attempted to position the sit-in as a necessarily radical move that could force the administration to begin working for ethnic studies.

This stance is also evident in Benitez’s account of the protests, which was published in Nassau on April 27, six days after the end of the sit-in. In his piece, “Get Up, Sit In,” Benitez insinuates a causal link between the sit-in and Goldfield’s letter. He writes: “There it was, in writing. The ‘hopes’ and ‘wishes’ of the administration had now become a commitment… In the end, we achieved: greater library holdings, student input in the new faculty search committees for Latino and Asian-American studies, the option for a visiting professor in Asian-American studies to remain in residence at Princeton… In addition, there is greater minority and campus unity and enthusiasm for Latino and Asian American studies than ever before. As David had put it, ‘a small sacrifice for what we might achieve.’”24 (emphasis mine)

Benitez indicates later in the piece that he and the other protesters were aware that the commitments outlined in Goldfield’s letter were simply reiterations of steps the administration had already taken, not new steps to be taken in response to the protesters’ demands.25 However, even as the demands of the protest were left unmet by the evening of April 21, the protesters, as a last attempt 23. Flyer on Latino Studies Effort, Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

24. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

25. Gabriel Benitez, “Get Up, Sit In,” 1995.

to claim some power over the university administration, tried to frame the sit-in as having accomplished something, at the very least.

Provost Goldfield, unwittingly or not, denied the protesters even this. On April 24, he wrote to the editor of the Daily Princetonian to correct certain mischaracterizations of his initial open letter: “the letter should not be characterized as a ‘final agreement.’ It was written on Friday afternoon to clarify a set of steps that the University had already taken prior to the protest to increase the number of faculty positions and curricular offerings in Latino and Asian American studies. None of the steps outlined in the letter resulted from the protest.”26 (emphasis mine)

Later, on April 27 (the same day Benitez’s piece was released), Goldfield wrote to Professor Albert Raboteau, the head of a faculty task force charged with increasing diversity in curricula, noting that, “[the students] took issue with my statement that their protest struck me as being ‘ironic’ because in such a substantial degree the University was already pursuing initiatives that they were advocating. Indeed, the primary purpose of my letter to the University community was to point out our already significant commitment to strengthen Asian American and Latino studies. So I

26. Letter from Provost Stephen Goldfield to the Editor of the Daily Princetonian, Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

do not agree with them in this respect.”27 (emphasis mine)

Goldfield’s words made clear the administration’s stance that the sit-in had no impact on the movement for Latino and AsianAmerican studies at Princeton. Regardless of whether the students were correct in their claims that the administration had been stalling, or whether the administration was correct in its claims that it had been working towards ethnic studies in good faith, what is clear is that the latter narrative became the dominant one in the wake of the sit-in. Today, with the many opinions regarding the 1995 sit-in, there remain questions surrounding the efficacy of the student protesters.

That the Princeton protesters in 1995 tried multiple tactics to assert a position of power over the administration in their negotiations reflects the larger legacy of the U.S. movement for ethnic studies, which emerged in the 1960s. For example, during the 1968-69 San Francisco State College strike, the longest student strike in U.S. history, the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), which included the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action (ICSA), Philippine-American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), and the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), “advocated the right of all Third World students to an education, … challenged the fundamental purpose of education by demanding a School of Ethnic Studies … and demanded the right to have ethnic studies classes taught and run by 27. Letter from Dean Stephen Goldfield to Professor Albert Raboteau, Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

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Third World peoples.”28 These demands were shaped by the influence of anti-imperialist struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the call for the use of “any means necessary” to achieve self-determination.

Asian-American students acted in solidarity with Latinx and black students through sit-ins, demonstrations, and strikes to exert their power to change the university. The resistance by administrators and trustees to creating ethnic studies programs–particularly as University President John Summerskill and others made promises that went years without being implemented–combusted into conflict after the administration revealed its willingness to use the police to suppress student actions.29 While the explosive nature of the San Francisco State Strike was rooted partly in the growing disillusionment towards the limited gains for people in color during the civil rights movement, by the 1980s and 1990s the viability of ethnic studies as an academic discipline declined. This resulted partly from academic culture wars instigated and financed by conservative academic organizations and philanthropic foundations.30 Furthermore, this all occurred in the larger context of a conservative backlash against social movements of the 1960s, bolstered at least partly by “white fears of an ethnic social revolution.”31 Thus, by 1995, when 28. Karen Umemoto, “‘On Strike!’ San Francisco State College Strike, 1968-69: The Role of Asian American Students,” Amerasia Journal 15, no. 1 (1989): 20-21.

29. Umemoto, 27.

30. Donna J. Nicol, “Movement Conservatism and the Attack on Ethnic Studies,” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 16, no. 5 (2013): 653-54.

31. Nicol, 656.

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the Princeton sit-in occurred, the context surrounding the protesters was not one that encouraged the students to turn to the more radical tactics of the 1960s, even as the protesters used nonviolent means to try to push for institutional change and cited the San Francisco State College demonstrations as a pivotal moment for ethnic studies in U.S. universities.32 Ultimately, the Nassau Hall protesters of 1995 failed in many respects. They were unable to command President Shapiro’s attention, convince the administration to seriously consider their demands, nor shape the very narrative surrounding their efforts. The administration ultimately went on to continue stalling on its commitments to fully support Latino and Asian-American studies – the Program in Latino Studies was established 14 years later in 2009, while the Program in AsianAmerican Studies was established nearly a decade after that, in 2018.33 Despite these setbacks, however, the sit-in serves today as one of the most important demonstrations of interethnic solidarity and collaboration in the history of Princeton University. That politically charged Latinx and Asian-American students could unite and act definitively in pursuit of academic diversity is, perhaps, enough of a victory in of itself.

32. “Asian American Student Task Force: Preliminary Proposals and Recommendations on issues related to the Princeton University Community,” 26 Apr 1993; Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

33. Christophers, Briana, et al., “The State of Asian American Studies and Latino Studies at Princeton” (Princeton, NJ, 2015), 7.

Cover page of a class essay dedicated to the “Nassau 22,” by Ronald Kim ’96

Bibliography Christophers, Briana, Nicole Gonzalez, Andrew Hahm, Cailin Hong, Evan Kratzer, Michelle Mui, Emily Tu, Rebecca Weng, Nicholas Wu, and Linda Zhong. “The State of Asian American Studies and Latino Studies at Princeton.”

Princeton, NJ, 2015.

Gamio, Álvaro. Latinx: A Brief Handbook. Princeton, NJ, 2016.

Nassau Hall Sit-in Ethnic Studies 1995 April; Office of the Vice President and Secretary Records, Box 163, Folder 14; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Nicol, Donna J. “Movement Conservatism and the Attack on Ethnic Studies.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 16, no. 5 (2013): 653-72.

Princeton University Asian American Student Association Records, Box 1; Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Umemoto, Karen. “‘On Strike!’ San Francisco State College Strike, 1968-69: The Role of Asian American Students.” Amerasia Journal 15, no. 1 (1989): 3-41.

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“A Love That Could Not Be Known”: Naim v. Naim and Chinese Citizenship in the American South Post-Brown Rachel Kim, University of Chicago ‘20 After the Brown v. Board (1954) decision, Southern states reeled from a national edict destabilizing the institution of segregation that was so deeply ingrained in Southern life. In response, white Southerners were determined to preserve anti-miscegenation laws as the last pillars of white supremacy. This paper examines the 1955 case Naim v. Naim that upheld a Virginia court’s divorce ruling between Han Say Naim, a Chinese sailor, and Ruby Lamberth, a white American woman, which not only legitimized anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia but also exposed the Supreme Court as fundamentally susceptible to political influence. Naim v. Naim was also a clear example of the federal government functioning as a political institution, as it gave credence to not only a long history of anti-Chinese sentiment but also state laws and cultural beliefs that upheld ideas of racial purity and the belief that Asian immigrants were perpetually foreign.

Introduction The history of the American South in the mid-twentieth century is largely defined by landmark cases that fundamentally changed the racial, political, and social landscapes of Southern states. In battles against anti-miscegenation laws, the plaintiffs of cases like Loving v. Virginia were challenging generations of deeply ingrained white supremacist institutions and sentiment, which were further provoked with each progressive decision from the Supreme Court. Still, before every landmark case there were lesser-known and often unsuccessful attempts to destabilize the laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the American South, including Naim v. Naim, the 1955 case that pertained to the divorce between a Chinese immigrant man and a white American woman living in Virginia. In the context of the United States’ history of anti-immigrant and anti-Chinese sentiment and legislation, longstanding stereotypes regarding Asian men’s sexuality, and the precarious political climate of the American South during and after the Brown v. Board decision, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the annulment of the Naims’ marriage was fundamentally influenced by the politics of the time, thus contradicting the judiciary’s supposed insusceptibility to partisanship.

Ultimately, the Naim ruling defended discriminatory anti-miscegenation laws that operated in open defiance of the Constitution and bolstered statutes that deprived noncitizens residing in the United States of basic constitutional protections.

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Naim v. Naim In 1942, a Chinese sailor named Han Say Naim docked in the United States to search for work as a seaman on an American ship.

After eventually securing a position on the S.S. Lipari, Naim found himself traveling the seas, from “India, Korea, and other Asian nations, and docking temporarily in New York City, Baltimore, and more often, Norfolk, Virginia.”1 It was not until February of 1952 when Naim met Ruby Lamberth in Norfolk, and the couple married only four months later. However, due to Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which completely banned all interracial relationships, Naim and Lamberth had to travel to North Carolina to wed. Though North Carolina also had anti-miscegenation laws, they were comparatively more flexible because of a previous ruling by the North Carolina attorney general that granted a marriage license to a Chinese man and his white fiancée. While little else is known about the Naims’ experience obtaining their marriage license in North Carolina, the Naims successfully became a legally married couple and returned to Virginia several days later.2 However, in the following year, Ruby Naim filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery (which may not have been true) and “described their relationship as a ‘love that could not be known’ in Virginia.”3 1 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 138.

2 Ibid., 139.

3 Ibid., 139.

The Portsmouth Circuit Court of Virginia annulled the marriage on the grounds of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and of a previous 1949 divorce that was also annulled under the Act.4 Naim’s appeal of the decision in the 1955 case Naim v. Naim was based not on romantic reasons but on the following arguments: 1. “The marriage was valid in North Carolina where it took place.

2. The Virginia law banning marriages between Caucasians and nonCaucasians was not applicable to him and his wife because they were not domiciled in Virginia.

3. The Virginia law violates the Fourteenth Amendment.”5 The annulment meant that “Naim’s application for an extension of his [spousal] visa would be rejected,” and he would no longer have a place to stay in the United States.6 With Naim’s lawyer David Carliner, Naim v. Naim made it to the Virginia Supreme Court, and then all the way to the United States Supreme Court.7 While the annulment of the Naims’ marriage was ultimately upheld, the judicial arguments made in the course of Naim v. Naim carried momentous implications for the battles around states’ rights, interracial marriages, 4 Ibid., 139.

5 Louis Lautier, “Interracial marriage laws under attack: Ask Supreme Court to rule the violate Constitution,” Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), Oct 22, 1955.

6 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 226.

7 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 140.

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and Naim’s status as a noncitizen in the United States.

Anti-Miscegenation Laws & Chinese Communities in the American South The history of the United States’ relationship with anti-miscegenation and interracial relationships is a long and complicated one, and deeply inextricable from the country’s larger defenses of a “social, political, and legal system of white supremacy.”8 The term “miscegenation” was first utilized in the 1860s and was based on an understanding of God ordaining the purity of races and public morals. Furthermore, the institution of marriage was the perfect medium to impose ideas of racial purity and white supremacy because it “linked individual desire to social respectability and financial responsibility” and linked “citizens and their dependents to the state.”9 Therefore, the ability for a social body or institution to regulate eligibility for marriage effectively “naturalized some social relationships, and … stigmatized others as unnatural.”10 Popular scholarship on miscegenation often focuses on “the politics of civil rights and the tenants of individual liberalism” and argues that laws preventing the ability to freely marry are directly inconsistent with the United States’ guarantees of individualism and personal choice.11 Still, the history of anti-miscegenation in the 8 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 1.

9 Ibid., 2.

10 Ibid., 2.

11 Ibid., 5.

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United States often took place in the context of segregation in the American South, and therefore largely focuses on interracial relationships between black and white Americans. However, anti-miscegenation statutes also applied in the American West, which expanded the definition of “colored” to include “American Indians, native Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, and Hindus.”12 Ultimately, antimiscegenation in American law and culture was a part of the United States’ larger project to uphold ideas of a racialized citizenry and the legal structures of white supremacy.13 Pockets of Chinese immigrants lived in the American South as early as the 1850s, and often worked as tea traders, seamen, or servants. Chinese immigrants during this time “received limited attention from public officials and legislative authorities” and were treated as part of the immigrant population without any particular “‘color’ identification to separate the Chinese from the white population.”14 As years passed, Chinese immigrants were largely employed as industrial laborers as they found homes in places like New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta. This new association with cheap labor led to the growth of antiChinese sentiment throughout the 1860s, which prevented Chinese immigrants from moving into and working in mining districts

12 Ibid., 2.

13 Ibid., 2.

14 Lucy M. Cohen, Chinese in the Post Civil-War South: A People Without History (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 2.

in the West.15 The first explicit mention of Chinese immigrants in anti-miscegenation statutes occurred in 1861 in Nevada.16 Furthermore, Chinese immigrants were racialized, sexualized, and gendered during this time, as Chinese immigrants were largely referred to as “Chinamen … when describing the threat supposedly posed to White men, a subject that initially garnered more attention than any threat ‘Chinamen’ may have posed to White women.”17 This characterization of Chinamen also prevailed in anti-miscegenation statutes, which positioned Chinese immigrants as a direct threat to both white racial purity and white families—the vanguards of “the great privilege of American citizenship.”18 Therefore, even since the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants’ status as noncitizens was a threat to both white economic and social hegemony.

Chinese Immigrant Men as Foreign Sexual Threats Although Chinese men were threats to white racial purity, historian Peggy Pascoe argues that the way they were sexualized was different than how black men were sexualized because “unlike Black men, Chinese immigrant men were rarely depicted as direct sexual dangers to White women.”19 However, scholar Mary Ting Yi Lui argues the opposite: that Chinese 15 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 80.

16 Ibid., 81.

17 Ibid., 82.

18 Ibid., 83.

19 Ibid., 83.

immigrant men were, like other “colored” men, still portrayed as perpetrators of “racialized sexual danger.”20 Twentieth century popular culture only further strengthened this characterization after the murder of Elsie Sigel, a New York woman,

by William L. Leon, a Chinese man. A 1909 article from the black-owned newspaper Baltimore Afro-American reported that Sigel was a “Chinese mission worker” who was killed by Leon, her alleged Chinese lover, in a jealous fit of rage. Still, nowhere is it more clear than in this article that a romantic relationship between a Chinese man and a white woman was considered both unimaginable and abominable: “It is an unusual thing for a Chinaman to kill a white woman. Chinamen, as a rule, are fearful of the white race. The Chinese frequently kill one another. The feeling among the police is that Leon’s many years of acquaintance with the girl and their understanding of each other must have deluded him into looking upon her as, in a sense, of his own race.”21

The murder of Elsie Sigel had drastic political and social consequences, even leading New York City’s “police and social reformers to police the Chinatown neighborhood and the city’s Chinese-owned establishments in an effort to curb social relations between Chinese men and white

20 Mary Ting Yi Lui. “Saving Young Girls from Chinatown: White Slavery and Woman Suffrage, 1910–1920.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 3 (2009): 396.

21 “MISS SIGEL MADE LOVE TO TWO CHINESE: Success of Wealthy Rival Drove Leon to Kill Girl,” Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), June 26, 1909.

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women.”22 Despite their portrayal as sexual menaces in the 1920s during the rise of the concept of “yellow peril,” Chinese men were also equally ridiculed and fetishized, making serious interracial relationships with white woman seeming all the more ridiculous.23 The short story “Chinese Love: The Story of an Interracial Love that Was Slightly Hampered by an Old Chinese Custom,” printed in a 1934 issue of the Baltimore AfroAmerican, told the tale of Janie, a white woman who just lost her job and a place to stay, and Cheng Moy, a Chinese laundryman in love with her. The story portrays Janie as a fundamentally kind woman who fell in love with Cheng Moy despite his race, perhaps because he gave her shelter when she almost fainted in public and “waited on her hand and foot” as she began living in his house.

The story also fed into popular notions of Chinese men as fundamentally unromantic or asexual, which only further corroborated the “[association of ] interracial [relationships] with illicit sex … to distinguish them from legitimate marriage.”24 In a moment of insecurity when Janie doubts Cheng Moy’s love for her (and that he might have another Chinese lover), Janie asks, “Were yellow men different from the men of her own race? Were they impervious to feminine 22 Mary Ting Yi Lui. “Saving Young Girls from Chinatown: White Slavery and Woman Suffrage, 1910–1920,” 414.

23 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 277.

24 Ibid., 83.

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charms[?]” The “Old Chinese Custom” in question that prevents Cheng Moy from acting on his love for Janie referred to how he was not allowed to make love to a guest in his house; doing so “would have been dishonored by his fathers in glory.”25 Furthermore, the entire story took extensive care in representing Cheng Moy’s accent, as all of his lines were heavily stylized: “May the lil’ blo’n blossom dleam gleat dleams,” Cheng Moy tells Janie in his “sadly mangled English which no distorted spelling can reproduce” before she falls asleep.26 Essentially, the portrayals of Chinese immigrant men in relation to white women in newspapers such as the Baltimore Afro-American reflected a mainstream understanding during the 1950s of Chinese men as fetishized, deeply foreign, and unassimilable threats to ideas of white women’s racial purity.

Naim v. Naim after Brown v. Board While Naim v. Naim was one of the first challenges to anti-miscegenation laws that involved an Asian man and a white woman, the ruling upholding the annulment fell in line with numerous previous rulings that ruled in favor of anti-miscegenation laws and were thus cited as precedent in the Virginia Supreme Court’s final decision. Given the tense judicial climate 25 Harry Winston, “CHINESE LOVE: The Story of an Interracial Love that Was Slightly Hampered by an Old Chinese Custom,” Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), June 2, 1934.

26 Harry Winston, “CHINESE LOVE: The Story of an Interracial Love that Was Slightly Hampered by an Old Chinese Custom.”

of the 1950s between Southern judicial bodies that bucked against federal rulings, Virginia’s decision to narrow the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment was a political response to landmark cases that attempted to disrupt racist Southern ways of life.

In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, which was known as “one of the most restrictive and harsh of all antimiscegenation laws in the United States” and was the grounds on which Ruby Naim justified her wish for annulment of marriage.27 Virginia’s attorneys in Naim argued first and foremost that the Racial Integrity Act was actually not discriminatory. While the Supreme Court case acknowledged that California had ruled anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional with the Perez v. Sharp case in 1948, the Virginia decision cited the Pace v. Alabama case in 1882 that defended Alabama’s antimiscegenation laws as nondiscriminatory because “the punishment of each offending person, whether white or black, is the same.”28 Much of Naim’s appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court relied on showing how the Racial Integrity Act was in defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted all citizens equal protection under the law.

The same amendment was successfully invoked just the year before in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, which desegregated all public schools and destabilized much of the legal foundations of the Southern racial hierarchy. However,

in the 1955 Naim v. Naim decision, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the use of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Brown v. Board decision could only apply to state laws that pertained to “political civil rights,” thus arguing that marriage is not a civil right, but an issue that “affects in a vital manner public welfare, and its control and regulation is a matter of domestic concern within each state.”29 After Brown and increasing racial unrest, the emphasis placed on states’ rights in the reasoning behind the Virginia Supreme Court’s narrow reading of the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment reflected its ability and willingness to push back against federal rulings in order to preserve a Southern way of life founded on white supremacy.

In “Virginia Eyes Sailor’s Status,” a 1956 article in The Washington Post and Times Herald, the author Ronald Farquhar caught onto the political bend of the Naim ruling, asking, “did the State’s highest court have a chip on its shoulder because of the Supreme Court’s segregation ruling? Was this open defiance? Was this a straw in the wind revealing what the State’s highest court would do when public school segregation cases come before it?” For Farquhar, the Naim v. Naim ruling was a clear example of the Virginia Supreme Court being influenced by the political climate, as he notes that the court was “almost militant in stating its belief that the State had every right to enact an inter-racial marriage ban ‘so that it shall not have a mongrel breed of

27 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 138.

28 Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80 (Va. 1955)

29 Ibid.

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citizens.’”30 The unrest after Brown v. Board of Education in the South even affected the progress of Naim v. Naim as Ham Say Naim and his lawyer, David Carliner, attempted to take the case to the US Supreme Court. Fearing that the country was on the brink of another Civil War, the Supreme Court blatantly avoided making a ruling on any case regarding anti-miscegenation. In July of 1955, when Naim v. Naim was heading towards the Supreme Court, Carliner and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tried to “‘get the Department of Justice [DOJ] to join in the appeal, both because of the constitutional question and because of the immigration aspects of the statute.’”31 However, the DOJ denied the request because the case was, according to Carliner, “‘too hot.’”32 And when in November of 1955 the Naim v. Naim appeal finally made its way to the Supreme Court, the federal judges ultimately sent the case back to Portsmouth Circuit Court on the grounds that the initial two local and state rulings were enough, and they had more important matters on hand—the passage and enforcement of both Brown and Brown II. Justice Felix Frankfurter noted that to rule on Naim right now would be to entangle the court in one too many issues with “such a momentum of history, deep feeling, moral and psychological presuppositions.”33 Supreme Court Justice Harold Durton even quipped that “in view of 30 Roger Farquhar, “Virginia Eyes Sailor’s Status,” The Washington Post and Times Herald (Washington, DC), Jan. 23, 1956.

31 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 146.

32 Ibid., 146.

33 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 230.

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the difficulties engendered by the segregation cases, it would be wise judicial policy to duck this question for a time.”34 The Legal Protection of Chinese Immigrants While the contentious Brown v. Board ruling turned Naim v. Naim into a judicial quandary, Han Say Naim’s status as a noncitizen of the United States also complicated the validity of the annulment of Naims’ marriage. With his marriage to an American woman annulled, Han Say Naim now found himself in a precarious position as a resident of the United States with no easy route towards citizenship.

He could only rely on his seaman’s visas, which could easily expire. Before their marriage went under, Han Say Naim and Ruby attempted to legally obtain citizenship status for Naim after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. However, Ruby’s “impatience [overcame] whatever love she still held for her husband.”35 In one of her letters to Naim, dated September 29, 1953, Ruby wrote: “I stopped in Washington D.C., but got exactly nowhere with results on your papers … Han, this whole mess is just too much for me to try and content with. I can’t take anymore and sincerely feel that it is best to get completely out of the whole situation. In other words, I would appreciate my freedom … I am sorry things worked out this way.

But there’s nothing else I can do. It’s just too much for me to try and get through.”36 Therefore, Naim’s 1955 appeal of the Virginia

courts’ ruling was not only a challenge to 34 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 152.

35 Ibid., 142.

36 Ruby Elaine Naim, “Letter to Ham Say Naim” (found

by Stephen M. Katz of The Virginian Pilot in Portsmouth Court Clerk’s office, dated September 29, 1953).

Southern states’ defense of anti-miscegenation laws, but also Naim’s last attempt to find a way to stay in the United States under a spousal visa. Naim’s precarious position spoke to the larger question of citizenship and how immigrants like him were still subject to discriminatory local and state laws despite not being afforded any of the protections of the United States.37 Throughout the history of the United States, citizenry was defined by proximity to whiteness; Naim was immediately defined by his foreignness while Ruby was simply described as a white woman. In the June 13, 1955 filing of Naim v. Naim in the Supreme Court of Virginia, the case docket begins with “Appellant, a Chinese, and appellee, a white person, in 1952 went to and were married.”38 Farquhar’s article “Virginia Eyes Sailor’s Status” starts the same way, calling Naim “an obscure Chinese seaman who married a white woman three years ago.”39 However, these characterizations were not simply rhetorical and had substantial legal consequences. The United States’ history of exclusion based on race corresponded to a historical “racial requirement to citizenship,” where any person lacking the protections of “the legal definition of ‘white’” was susceptible to the consequences of “the rule of racial unassimilability.”40 For example, the Nationality Act of 1790 gave “the right to naturalized citizenship” only to “‘free white persons’ of good moral character,” while the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited all Chinese immigrants from entering the 37 Ibid., 140.

38 Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80 (Va. 1955) 39 Roger Farquhar, “Virginia Eyes Sailor’s Status.”

40 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 37-38.

United States, and Takao Ozawa v. US (1922) and US v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) ruled that “Japanese and Asian Indians were racially ineligible to citizenship.”41 It was not until 1952 that the McCarran-Walter Act “abolished all racial requirements to citizenship.”42 In refusing to rule on Naim v. Naim and upholding the state Supreme Court’s ruling, the US Supreme Court acknowledged that Naim’s status as a Chinese national could complicate state rulings based on the Racial Integrity Act, but the fact that Ruby was the plaintiff and a legal resident of Virginia made Naim’s appeal illegitimate and instead legitimized the power of the Racial Integrity Act.43 Under this judicial legacy that positioned Asian immigrants as inherently unassimilable, Naim was left without protection under the law.

However, Naim’s lawyer David Carliner used Naim’s noncitizen status as his primary argument against both the annulment and anti-miscegenation laws at large. A major part of his argument noted that Naim’s status as a Chinese national and previous treaties made between China and the United States, such as the Immigration Treaty of 1880 and the Angell Treaty, granted Naim “special protections that overrode discriminatory state laws.”44 While these treaties had arguably not been in practice for nearly seventy years, Carliner still used it to argue that anti-miscegenation laws violated national foreign policy, which would force this case to go to the Supreme Court.45 41 Ibid., 37-38.

42 Ibid., 37-38.

43 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 151.

44 Ibid., 141.

45 Ibid., 144.

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The Question of the Fourteenth Amendment Carliner also argued that Chinese immigrants like Han Say Naim were protected by national edicts such as the Fourteenth Amendment. Carliner referenced the precedent of Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), in which Yick Wo, a Chinese man, successfully petitioned the Supreme Court against a California law that prevented the imposition of an extra tax for owners of Chinese laundries.

The Supreme Court invoked both foreign policy statutes and the Constitution, ultimately ruling that “those subjects of the Emperor of China who have the right to temporarily or permanently reside within the United States, are entitled to enjoy the protection guaranteed by the Constitution and afforded by [its] laws.”46 However, Virginia’s attorneys argued that Carliner failed to properly address the precedent set by Sei Fujii v. California (1952), which ruled against California’s anti-alien land laws because they were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. By referencing the Fujii ruling in how “the [anti-alien land laws] created racial classifications that had ‘no substantial relation to the health, safety, and welfare of the state and therefore were arbitrary and capricious,’ Virginia’s attorneys emphasized the legitimacy of the Racial Integrity Act of Virginia of 1924 by arguing that the Act, unlike the anti-alien land laws, was created “for the racial benefit and protection of the Virginia citizen.”47 Thus, the annulment of the Naims’ marriage was not a matter of constitutionality, and the Virginia Supreme

46 Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356 47 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 145.

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Court ruled in favor of the annulment.48 The Virginia justices wrote in their decision: “We find … no requirement that the State shall not legislate to prevent the obliteration of racial pride … Both sacred and secular history … teach that nations and races have better advanced in human progress when they cultivated their own distinctive characteristics and culture and developed their own peculiar genius.”49

In Carliner and Naim’s attempt to appeal the US Supreme Court, the widespread fear of the consequences of challenging antimiscegenation persisted alongside concerns with Naim’s ethnicity and noncitizen status.

Carliner slightly changed his legal focus to argue how the Racial Integrity Act “violated ‘the equal protection and due processes clauses” of the Fourteenth Amendment that included noncitizens like Naim, which would set this case as one that sent legal reverberations across the country.50 While Carliner sought support from other progressive legal entities such as the American Civil Liberties Union, organizations such as the Jewish Anti Defamation League expressed skepticism at whether Naim v. Naim would excite “public sympathy” based on generally negative attitudes towards interracial relationships and popular stories of white women being captured or abused by Chinese men.51 Despite garnering some support, the Supreme Court’s ultimate refusal to rule on Naim v. Naim legitimized the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision and subsequently left Han Say 48 Ibid., 145.

49 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 271 50 Ibid., 146.

51 Ibid., 147-148.

Naim on American soil without any effective protections under American jurisdiction. The justices sent the case back to review to the Virginia Supreme Court, which refused to rule on the case again. After the final decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, Virginians and other Southern citizens “celebrated the … refusal … as a victory for states’ rights.”52 After Naim After Naim v. Naim came to a close, what happened to Han Say Naim is largely unknown. Naim died alone at 91 years old in Brooklyn, New York, with no clear indication that he ever received legal residency or if he continued to live in the United States as an undocumented immigrant.53 With antimiscegenation laws still widely in effect across the American South, it was not until nearly a decade later that two major cases again challenged the institution—the first time in 1964’s McLaughlin v. Florida and the second in the more famous Loving v. Virginia (1967).54 After Naim and before Loving, McLaughlin strengthened the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the face of Florida’s ban on interracial cohabitation, thus overturning not only the law but also Pace v. Alabama (1883). With Pace overturned, the “logic of equal application … that miscegenation laws were not discriminatory because they applied to Whites as well as Blacks” could no longer be used as it had been in Naim to uphold the legality of the Racial Integrity Act. This case indicated the 52 Stephanie Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, 152.

53 Ibid., 154.

54 Hereafter, Loving.

monumental judicial shift that paved the way to the eventual success of Loving that Naim v.

Naim attempted earlier but did not achieve due to the judiciary’s apprehension regarding the political climate at the time.55 Despite the success of McLaughlin in Florida, and similar rulings legalizing interracial relationships later in other Southern states like Oklahoma and Louisiana, “no state … held on to its prohibition on interracial marriage with more tenacity than Virginia.”56 Two years after Naim’s unsuccessful attempt to appeal to the Supreme Court, a white man named Richard Loving tried to marry Mildred Jeter, a black woman, in a county courthouse in Bowling Green, Virginia.57 The next year, the couple went to Washington, DC to get their marriage certificate that they later “framed and placed proudly on a wall of [their] home.”58 Back in Virginia, one of their neighbors called the Caroline County police, who raided the Lovings’ home in the middle of the night to arrest them for violating Virginia’s antimiscegenation statute. The Lovings were sent to jail and were later called to appear in trial in 1959.59 Judge Bazile, the county judge, did not send the Lovings to prison but instead banished the pair from Virginia for 25 years, a common punishment imposed upon interracial couples across the South.

While it might seem as if Virginia thought itself essentially exempt from the Fourteenth Amendment, Judge Bazile was still cautious; he was “caught between the desire to enforce 55 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 248.

56 Ibid., 272.

57 Ibid., 271.

58 Ibid., 272.

59 Ibid., 272.

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the state’s disapproval of interracial marriage on the one hand and the fear that the growing opposition to miscegenation law might provoke federal oversight on the other.”60 The Lovings moved to Washington, DC, and in 1963 Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy regarding the couple’s position. As Kennedy, the ACLU, and Virginian lawyers looked over their case, the Lovings moved back to Virginia where “the sheriff from an neighboring county [threatened] the Lovings with arrest if he found them in his jurisdiction; their lawyer was harassed by locals who put sugar in his gas tank.”61 After Judge Bazile rejected their request for reexamination, the Lovings took their case to the Virginia Supreme Court, which not only upheld the local decision but also noted that there was “‘no sound judicial reason … to depart from our holding in the Naim case.’”62 But unlike with Naim, it was in 1967 that the ACLU, with the support of numerous civil rights advocacy groups, felt they had the perfect opportunity and case to begin a federal appeal against Virginia’s antimiscegenation statutes.63 The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Lovings, deciding that the Racial Integrity Act violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. “‘The freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race,’” Chief Justice Earl Warren argued, “‘resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.’”64 In the Loving decision, Naim v. Naim 60 Ibid., 273.

61 Ibid., 273.

62 Ibid., 275.

63 Ibid., 275.

64 Ibid., 284.

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was mentioned once as precedence in the upholding of the constitutionality of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. However, in accordance with the popular legacy of the Warren Court, the Loving decision not only dismantled Virginia’s arguments on the grounds of the Fourteenth Amendment but also explicitly acknowledged that the purpose of anti-miscegenation laws was inherently discriminatory: “In Naim, the state court concluded that the State’s legitimate purposes were ‘to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,’ and to prevent ‘the corruption of blood,’ ‘a mongrel breed of citizens,’ and ‘the obliteration of racial pride,’ obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.”65 The irony of the Supreme Court deciding to rule

strongly in favor of Loving yet refusing a decade earlier to review Naim v. Naim—a case that was also invoking the Fourteenth Amendment— was not lost on even Chief Justice Warren, who had been in tenure during Naim in 1955. While deliberating on Naim, he could not convince the other justices to review the case despite “[drafting]—and then, at the last minute, [withdrawing]—a stinging dissent chiding his colleagues” for refusing to see the case that so clearly fell under their jurisdiction.66 Thus, the judiciary’s susceptibility to the political climate belies its original purpose as strictly loyal to Constitutional intent; instead, its rulings become products of their time.

Conclusion Naim v. Naim—despite its failure—was one 65 Loving v. Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) 66 Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, 231.

of the first cases that brought the problem of anti-miscegenation statutes to the national arena; it also called attention to the shifting institutions of citizenship, immigration, and question of belonging in the twentieth century. The decision of the Virginia Supreme Court in Naim v. Naim was predictable considering the social and political context of the American South at the time, which was reeling from Brown v. Board and desperately hanging onto anti-miscegenation laws as one of the last institutions explicitly devoted to maintaining white supremacist ideals of racial purity. In addition, the United States had a long history of anti-Chinese immigrant sentiment that identified Chinese men as sexual menaces along with other “colored” men. Chinese immigrants were mapped as firmly “nonwhite” on the racial binary and labeled as perpetually foreign, exempt from the rights guaranteed by citizenship. The precarious tension surrounding Brown that had so strongly crippled the potential success of Naim had abated by the time of Loving as more Southern courts began ruling against old anti-miscegenation statutes, but Naim’s unsuccessful appeal symbolized the failures of the American justice system and showed how the courts ultimately remain political institutions that are deeply susceptible to history, political pressure, and popular sentiment.

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(Washington, DC), Jan. 23, 1956.

Hinnershitz, Stephanie. A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South.

Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Lautier, Louis. “Interracial marriage laws under attack: Ask Supreme Court to rule the violate Constitution.” Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), Oct 22, 1955.

Loving v. Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) Lui, Mary Ting Yi. “Saving Young Girls from Chinatown: White Slavery and Woman Suffrage, 1910–1920.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no.

3 (2009).

MISS SIGEL MADE LOVE TO TWO CHINESE: Success of Wealthy Rival Drove Leon to Kill Girl.” Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore, MD) June 26, 1909.

Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80 (Va. 1955) Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Pascoe, Peggy. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Ruby Elaine Naim, “Letter to Ham Say Naim.” (found by Stephen M. Katz of The Virginian Pilot in Portsmouth Court Clerk’s office, dated September 29, 1953).

Winston, Harry. “CHINESE LOVE: The Story of an Interracial Love that Was Slightly Hampered by an Old Chinese Custom.” Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), June 2, 1934.

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356

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‘Stop All the Garbage Going Up’: Capital Flight, Immigration, and Suburban Development in 1980’s Monterey Park, California Eric Wang, University of Chicago ‘20 This paper situates the history of Chinese immigration to Monterey Park, California within broader histories of suburbanization and economic development. The first half of the paper begins by tracing changes in international immigration policies and suburban real estate practices. It then examines race, immigration, development, and their connections to the city’s debate over land use. The second half follows two provocative activists in their political campaign to make English the city’s official language. Overall, I argue that antidevelopment efforts in the city were not primarily motivated by racist attitudes toward Chinese newcomers, but were responses to development; however, Chinese immigrants still threatened the social status of long-term White residents.

Introduction In 1985, a group of thirty-five Asian immigrant women walked into a Sizzler Family Steakhouse.

For these guests, having lunch at the popular chain restaurant in their new home of Monterey Park, California was as symbolic of what it meant to be an American as chucking a football or eating hamburgers. Yet none of them knew how to order from the menu, much less how to use Sizzler’s self-serve salad bar. After all, the Salvation Army had planned the lunch outing as an educational field trip, one of many adjustment programs for Chinese immigrants arriving in Monterey Park. To accommodate record levels of immigration from East Asian countries, the city coordinated with community organizations, schools, and businesses to provide English language instruction, translation services, counseling, job training, and other services for its new residents. In recognition of these efforts, the Citizens Forum named Monterey Park one of eight nationwide “All-America Cities.”1 The June 16, 1985 issue of The Los Angeles Times has a photograph of Lily Lee Chen, Monterey Park Councilwoman and first ever Chinese-born female mayor of an American city, brandishing the city’s “All-America” banner.2 For anyone who had been casually reading the Times, the picture was more a false image than a faithful representation of the city’s state of immigrant relations. While Monterey Park was being hailed as “a City of Bridges,” it was also undergoing two turbulent episodes involving its new Chinese residents. As the city took in an unprecedented number of immigrants in the 1980s, it faced escalating tensions related to 1. Mike Ward, “Helping Asian Immigrants Proves to Be the American Way: Monterey Park: a City of Bridges,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1985.

2. Ibid.

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economic development and cultural conflict.

These frictions complicated the popular social theory, which had emerged two decades earlier, that Asian Americans were a “model minority.”

Building on Asian stereotypes constructed in the early nineteenth century, sociologist William Pettersen posited in 1966 that Asian Americans were able to overcome ethnic subjugation, smoothly assimilate, and achieve high-levels of success in America because of their cultural emphasis on hard work and responsibility. The model minority stood in contrast to African and Hispanic Americans, who Pettersen termed “problem minorities.”3 But the Chinese immigrants to Monterey Park were far from model minorities. Rather, when the second wave of Chinese immigration to the United States reached its peak in the 1980s, these modern immigrants, who were much wealthier than the Chinese laborers who moved to California in the nineteenth century, quickly became the city’s majority ethnic group and fundamentally altered its urban landscape. As the record shows, Monterey Park struggled to integrate its new residents along cultural, racial, and economic dimensions, and there was no such thing as a peaceful assimilation.

Second Wave Chinese Immigration to the United States Today, Monterey Park has one of the highest concentrations of Chinese Americans of any United States 3. William Pettersen, “Success Story, Japanese-American Style,” New York Times, January 9, 1966.

municipality.4 The process of the city’s transformation to what Times reporter Mark Arax in 1987 called the “First Suburban Chinatown” started with landmark, reciprocal changes in international immigration policies between 1965 and 1979.5 Beginning in the United States, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 overturned the quotas set by the National Origins Act, which discriminated against Asians and other non-Whites in favor of northern Europeans. In a Cold War effort to clean up America’s reputation regarding racism and to bolster “the national economy, cultural interests, or welfare of the United States,” Congress created a seven-tier preference system to encourage all young foreign professionals to leave their homes and become American citizens, privileging “architects, engineers, lawyers, physicians, surgeons” and their families. 6 Under the act, once the worker’s immediate family had naturalized, they could bring over their extended relatives through a process called

4. Elizabeth Hoeffel et al., The Asian Population: 2010, 2010 Census Briefs, US Census Bureau, 2010.

5. Mark Arax, “Monterey Park: Nation’s 1st Suburban Chinatown,” Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1987.

6. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (1965).

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chain migration.7 The push of political and economic instability in Asia complemented the allure of life in America. Mainland China’s 1966 Cultural Revolution “resulted in extreme destruction, violations of human rights, disillusionment with socialist government, and increased dependence on family.”8 However, because of Cold War politics, the US only recognized the Republic of China (Taiwan) as a country at the time, and there was virtually no immigration from Mao’s China to the US. In fact, most Chinese immigrants to the US between 1965 and 1980 came from two of the “Four Asian Tigers”: Hong Kong, a British territory to which mainland refugees had fled, and Taiwan, which was dealing with its own authoritarian human rights abuses and instabilities under the nationalist Kuomintang. Only when Mao died in 1976 did China’s immigration policies relax. As part of his platform’s larger program of economic reforms to reverse 7. Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC, a non-profit organization dedicated to Asian American and Pacific Islander issues, prefers to use the term “family-based immigration” instead of “chain migration,” which makes family reunification under the US immigration system seem like a quick and simple process, rather than the ordeal it actually is. I choose to use the second phrase despite its controversy because it might be more familiar to readers. See “Rep. Chu Introduces Reuniting Families Act To Improve And Strengthen Family Reunification Laws.” Asian Americans Advancing Justice, 6 Feb. 2018, advancingjustice-aajc.org/news/rep-chu-introduces-reuniting-families-act-improve-and-strengthen-family-reunification-laws.

8. Uma Anand Segal, A Framework for Immigration: Asians in the United States, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

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the devastations of the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Deng Xiaoping issued the Four Modernizations, which aimed to open China up to foreign trade, investment, and Western science and technology.9 Following on the joint issuance of the Three Communiqués by the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which normalized relations between the two countries, as well as the passage of the Four Modernizations, the US recognized the PRC as a sovereign state and Chinese students, academics, and professionals came to the US in record numbers, many choosing not to return.10 The transnational liberalization of immigration policy and the introduction of a skills-based preference system mobilized high-value workers who were raised and trained in China for the American labor market. These developments constituted what social scientists call “brain drain” or “human capital flight,” which is the emigration of highly trained individuals from a country.11 The second wave Chinese immigrant now had a professional background, an accompanying family, more financial savings, and a higher earning potential. In comparison, the nineteenth century Chinese immigrant was often a poor, sub-working-class male who toiled on railroads, in mines, farms, 9. Ibid.

10. Biao Xiang, “Emigration Trends and Policies in China: Movement of the Wealthy and Highly Skilled,” Migration Policy Institute, February 2016, 11-12.

11. Cervantes, Mario, and Dominique Guellec. “The Brain Drain: Old Myths, New Realities.” OECD Observer, OECD, Jan. 2002, oecdobserver.org/news/archivestory.php/aid/673/The_brain_drain:_Old_myths,_ new_realities.html.

Table 1: Summary Data Table for Monterey Park

and factories, often collateralizing his wife or entire family’s labor just to pay for the cost of moving to America. Although not all Chinese immigrants after 1965 were rich (many Chinese immigrants to New York City were just as poor), the largest difference between the post-1965 Chinese immigrant and his predecessor was that the modern one possessed more human, social, and financial capital. The Immigration and Nationality Act’s preference system allowed the professionalized Chinese immigrant to bypass immigration restrictions. On the other hand, union leaders and abolitionists in the nineteenth century feared that Chinese laborers would overrun traditional American labor and succeeded in blocking Chinese immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.12 More money, schooling, and resources had saved the modern Chinese American immigrant from some racist restrictions, but these factors could not smooth the general frictions of 12. Moon-Ho Jung, “Outlawing ‘Coolies’: Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of Emancipation,” American Quarterly, 57 (2005): 677-701.

assimilation. In fact, having more money created new problems for the immigrant population in Monterey Park that went beyond old issues of labor competition.

After the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, Chinese immigration to the United States multiplied. Since 1890, the Chinese had never immigrated to America in numbers greater than 30,000 per decade, but now they were coming by the hundreds of thousands (Table 1).

Asians of various professional backgrounds poured into traditional entry ports like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, fanning out to places like Flushing and Chicago. Monterey Park, located about twenty minutes east of Los Angeles, was a popular destination spot for new arrivals.

In 1970, Asians accounted for 15 percent of the city’s population and by 1981, the total population of the city was 55,000, divided in thirds between Whites, Asians, and Latinos.13 By 1986, as Whites left and Asians and Latinos began moving in, Monterey 13. Mary Barber, “Monterey Park Growth Lid Sought,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1981.

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Park’s population had grown to 60,000, 40 percent of whom were Asian.14 Los Angeles County’s 18.9 percent real increase in median household income between 1979 and 1989, the quadrupling of total bank deposits in Monterey Park’s financial institutions from $500 million to $2,000 million between 1981 and 1989, and a skyrocketing valuation of construction reflect larger developments happening in the greater area.15 All other things equal, a municipality’s total value of construction tends to fluctuate from year to year depending on the scheduling of development projects; however, the data for Monterey Park shows sustained, exponential growth. Land development, construction, and zoning would be the most heated “immigrant” issues facing the city.

Struggles over Development and Land The Los Angeles Times article “Homeowners Ready Protest” gives a good idea of what Monterey Park’s residents were like in 1963, before the sudden influx of Asian immigrants. The article profiled Monterey Park homeowners’ reactions to a city council hearing over “Monterey West,” a proposed development project that would rezone an area from single unit family housing to apartment space. In 1963, angry White homeowners complained that the project would double the city’s population, congest the streets, and endanger children playing outside. “We live on residentialtype streets which were never intended to 14. Mike Ward, “3 Councilmen Hit by Ouster Effort in Monterey Park,” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1986.

15. US Census Bureau, Income, 1960-1990, prepared

by Social Explorer, (accessed March 5 2018).

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handle the type of traffic contemplated,” one charged. To get their message across, residents boycotted the businesses of city council members and succeeded in stopping the project. Their efforts show that homeowners did not want Monterey Park to be a highly developed, boisterous place like Los Angeles, but rather a quaint town at arm’s length from all the urban hubbub.16 But one man would bring the same issue to haunt Monterey Park just a decade later. Frederic Hsieh, a Chinese immigrant himself, was originally a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles but later found real estate finance much more lucrative. In 1977, the young developer invited Monterey Park’s prominent leaders to dine with him at a Chinese restaurant, where he announced that the city would soon be a mecca for the Chinese. No one believed him.17 Years later, Hsieh and his Mandarin Realty Company masterminded the transformation of Monterey Park into the Chinese American hub it is today through large-scale development and land speculation. His business strategy lay in recognizing that affluent Asian migrants had been mobilized by major, international changes. He bought abandoned lots at $5 per square foot and sold them to wealthy overseas developers to entice immigrants to come. He put out advertisements in overseas Chinese-language newspapers proclaiming Monterey Park the “Chinese 16. “Homeowners Ready Protest: Monterey Park Residents Seek to Bock Apartments,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1963.

17. Arax, “Monterey Park: Nation’s 1st Suburban Chinatown.”

Beverly Hills” and calling it “Little Taipei,” adding that its 818-area code meant good fortune in Chinese numerology.18 Through his efforts, Hsieh pulled Asian immigrants who were looking for work on the West Coast into the unassuming neighborhood of Monterey Park.

As Hsieh predicted, most of the Asian immigrants to Monterey Park were the sort of young professionals the Immigration Act had outlined: engineers, software developers, lawyers, graduate students and so on, who saw economic opportunity in Southern California.

According to Councilwoman and future US Representative Judy Chu said, many of the immigrants found Monterey Park appealing because of the city’s “middle-class reputation, its accessibility from all major Southern California freeways, and it’s fairly affordable housing.” 19 Sensing opportunity, other real estate developers moved into Monterey Park hoping to replicate Hsieh’s newfound success. As a result, 3,360 residential units were built between 1970 and 1980, most in high density zones. Given that the city’s population was 55,000 at the end of 1980, and that 75 percent of the city’s residential area was zoned for single-family housing, this represented an enormous upsurge in residential construction, increasing concerns about overcrowding.20 18. Christian Berthelsen, “Frederic Hsieh Is Dead at 54; Made Asian-American Suburb,” New York Times, August 20, 1999.

19. Bert Eljera, “The Chinese Beverly Hills,” AsianWeek, May 24-30, 1996.

20. “Anti-Growth Initiatives Filed in Monterey Park,” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1982.

The construction craze was enabled by the introduction of condominiums, a brand-new form of real estate at the time. A June 1962 report by the American Society of Planning Officials attributed the “significant increase in interest by builders and public officials in the ‘condominium’” to the passage of Section 234 of the 1961 Housing Act, which, according to urban planner Frank So, provided “a new method … of financing cooperative apartment buildings.”21 Because of changes in the financial regulations governing real estate investments, property owners could now sell condo units just as easily as they could sell single-family dwellings. Materially, there was no difference between a condo and an apartment: for residents, they looked and felt the same. The main difference was that residents rented apartments but bought and owned condominiums, meaning that with condos, developers had all the construction scaling and individualized selling benefits of apartment units with the added legal benefit of non-ownership. Sellers could recoup building costs by charging residents more for ownership, slapping on monthly condo fees, and divesting themselves of pricy repairs and insurance policies. As an investment vehicle, condos allowed real estate developers like Hsieh to capitalize on the 1965 immigration wave. Given that affluent immigrants were coming by the thousands to look for housing, developers had a guaranteed source of demand for their construction projects. These professional 21. Frank S. So, Condominium, Information Report no. 159, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PLANNING OFFICIALS, Chicago, IL, 1962.

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immigrants had the money to afford homeownership and amenities but might not have wanted to invest in a single-family unit.

An added benefit for living in Monterey Park was that they would be nearby other Asian immigrants. Condos were an innovative form of real estate that satisfied the needs of both sellers and buyers, but the longterm effects of development would end up dividing Monterey Park’s residents against each other.

During these changes, the Monterey Park City Council hired economic consultant Dr. Shant Agajanian in 1987 to assess the development situation. He found that real estate practices such as those used by Hsieh had serious consequences for the city’s wellbeing. The largest issue was that developers were out of control, inflating land prices, jamming as many condo units into lots as possible, and speculating on potential investments. Hyper-development had the side-effect of also draining the city’s treasury. City financial officer David Bentz observed that “taxable sales rose less than 2% from 1977 to 1985,” while in the same period, the taxable sales of “San Gabriel Valley as a whole rose more than 10%, and the statewide increase was 23%.”22 According to Agajanian, the drop in tax revenue was due to rent inflation, which had forced property owners to subdivide their lots and lease out the partitions to multiple storekeepers. The new businesses could collectively afford the rent, but they were small in scale and often run by immigrants who were happy just 22. Mike Ward, “Cities Report Growth—and Some Losses—From Asian Business,” Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1987.

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to have a place to live. Because sources of cheap, abundant land had been exhausted by rapacious developers, Monterey Park could no longer attract larger, more efficient businesses, like supermarkets or car dealerships, that generated higher volumes in taxable sales; nor could it hold onto its medium-sized businesses that had previously supported its economy. Agajanian concluded that the city now held less productive “12seat restaurants and the 500-square foot boutiques that [sold] $3.95 blouses and $4.95 dresses.”23 With the additional passage of California’s Proposition 13 property tax cut, Monterey Park officials and residents grew increasingly worried that their city’s tax revenue would not expand quickly enough to accommodate its bloating number of residents.

The effects of such historic changes in immigration and economic policies made Monterey Park homeowners and average citizens like Harold Fiekelborn, Wesley Shyer, and Sonya Gerlach feel like strangers in the place they called home. Gerlach, a social worker who had lived with her husband and two sons in the city since 1967, could list a number of problems that she and others were facing because of hyper-development: “overcrowding, traffic congestion, condo-mania, threatened highrise, inadequate schools, water and sewer problems, a deteriorating quality of life for seniors, youth and all of our citizens.”24 In 1980, she and a group primarily consisting of White residents came together from across 23. Ibid.

24. Mary Barber, “Growth and Safety Dominate Election.” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1982.

the political spectrum to form the Residents Association of Monterey Park (RAMP) and block the City Council’s consideration of Proposition A, which would rezone another area for condominium development.25 RAMP blocked the proposed rezoning and went on to support anti-development candidates for City Council, including Gerlach herself. According to their news statements, “RAMPers” took issue with the rapid growth that had destabilized the city.

The current infrastructure of Monterey Park, they said, was too outdated to handle the sudden influx of immigrants and money, and developers were relentlessly chasing a profit motive at everyone’s expense. Councilman Cam Briglio, who won on a RAMP platform, called for an end to the rampant condominiumization: “Let’s stop now; stop all this garbage going up. Anywhere, there’s an open lot, [developers are] jamming condominiums in.”26 Briglio worried that developers congested streets because they felt no responsibility to provide adequate spaces for parking. As a result, he said, there were “kids playing in the streets and cars parked all over,” and it would only be a matter of time until someone got hit.27 RAMP played an activist role in the construction debate, opposing the developer interest by knocking on doors, circulating informational flyers and running antidevelopment candidates for city office. They took the fight straight to the developers when they drafted, approved, and secured enough

signatures to submit two propositions to City Council in 1982. Proposition K limited the number of residential units built in the current year to 200 and 100 for every year after for ten years; Proposition L put any rezoning request for an area larger than one acre to referendum. The petitioners secured enough signatures to trigger a special election, in which both propositions were approved by popular vote.28 To implement Proposition K, the Council established a growth limit in which twenty units a year were set aside for single-family unit housing, and in cases where there were more building permit requests than allotted, activating a point system which would grade the project proposals on criteria “giving preference to developments with the least harmful impact on air quality, traffic and other problems.”29 For instance, a project building 70 percent on open space would earn more points than one building 40 percent on open space.

Other measurable criteria, like number of units per acre, were also considered, as were more subjective qualities. Landscaping and architecture often played a decisive role in awarding permits, since one concern was that the developers had created a look of urban sleaze by dotting the San Gabriel hills with an ugly, inconsistent architectural style.30 Reformers counted on Proposition K’s growth limit to do the dual job of cutting down on development and ensuring quality construction by forcing developers to compete against each other.

25. Eljera, “The Chinese Beverly Hills.”

26. Mike Ward, “Condo Ban Backers Vow to ‘Stop All the Garbage Going Up,’” Los Angeles Times, Oct 17, 1985.

27. Ibid.

28. Mary Barber, “Legal Tests Seen for Props. L, K,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1982.

29. Mike Ward, “Monterey Park Housing Limit Pains Developers,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1985.

30. Ibid.

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Except none of it worked. Immediately before Proposition K took effect, any developer who had read the news bypassed the regulations by securing their building permits in advance. A total of 282 condominium permits were issued, saturating the market, and leaving the point system inactive from 1983 to 1984.31 Developers who were less fortunate or new to the industry were left out. Architect Tien Chu and his real estate business partner Long Chen voiced their frustrations: “We bought the lot already. We put $300,000 cash on the lot and now we may have hold the project to next February for the next allotment. And then maybe we won’t get that allotment either.”32 Monterey Views, a limited partnership between Frank Venti, Lelia Jabin, and Bob Chu, similarly complained to local newspapers and even took the fight to court, waging a costly, up and down five-year legal battle with the city that culminated in their own defeat.33 In a less confrontational take on antigrowth efforts, City Planner Bob Dawson explained to the Times that the early 1980s recession was already slowing down construction and that many condo units recently built had remained unsold. Pointing out that there existed automatic stabilizers to control development, for example additional fees that were charged on every unit built in a crowded school district, Dawson also noted that most construction was occurring 31. Ward, “Condo Ban Backers Vow to ‘Stop All the Garbage Going Up.’” 32. Ward, “Monterey Park Housing Limit Pains Developers.”

33. Berkley Hudson, “Judge Upholds Growth Limit,” Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1989.

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in older sections of Monterey Park, where firms were tearing down and redeveloping multifamily unit housing.34 In a stronger approach, advocates like Frederic Hsieh and other developers charged the City Council of being plain racists. Their argument was easy to make. As Filipino American and mayor of Monterey Park G. Monty Manibog put it, “people complained about the proliferation of condos, and it is mostly the Chinese who build and buy condos.

And people complained about mini-malls, and it is mostly Chinese who are building and operating tiny shops in little shopping centers.”35 Exploiting the correlation between hyper-development and Chinese immigration (that he himself engineered), Hsieh claimed that development restrictions were akin to Jim Crow laws or immigration quotas; decision-makers tried to pass them off as reasonable regulations, but underneath the surface, they were thinly-veiled attempts to protect White power. Hsieh urged all residents of Monterey Park to come to terms with the fact that the city was no longer majority White, but majority minority.36 Hsieh was obviously biased as a developer, and was—for someone who had spent most his life away in Hong Kong—not as qualified to speak on the state of racial relations in Monterey Park or much less testify on behalf of its Chinese American community.37 Yet in a panel hosted by the 34. Barber, “Legal Tests Seen for Props. L, K.” 35. Mike Ward, “Monterey Park’s New Council Calls Halt to Building,” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1986.

36. Andrea Estepa, “Monterey Park ‘Harmony’ Panel Turns Into Debate,” Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1987.

37. Berthelsen, “Frederic Hsieh Is Dead at 54; Made Asian-American Suburb.”

University of Southern California’s Center for Real Estate Development (USC) in 1987, he tried to do both when he charged that the Monterey Park growth restrictions were inherently racist. “Here you have a lot of Chinese coming,” he said, “and suddenly there are a lot of laws restricting this and restricting that.” Besides, he argued, the city was bound to develop into a Los Angeles or San Francisco anyway, so residents ought to get used to the noise and cityscape. Joseph Rubin, then chairman of RAMP, which had gained Asian members since its founding, replied that “I have Chinese neighbors. They are equally as concerned as I am about noise, about pollution, about where to shop. I’m sorry Hsieh sees himself as representative of the Chinese. I’d like to see some real Chinese representation on this panel.”

According to the Times, the audience, both White and Asian, was outraged by Hsieh’s comments and met Rubin’s with applause.

The organizer of the forum, USC Real Estate Professor Eric Heikkila, then brought a much-needed regional perspective to the debate. Citing San Diego and Orange County, he brought attention to the fact that development was “being debated just as vigorously in areas where the ethnic element does not come into it.” The real issue, in the words of Councilman Chris Houseman, came down to overdevelopment and “inappropriate, badly designed, multiunit houses.38” Hsieh was a poor spokesman for the Chinese American community and, as most of his opposition agreed that he hurt his 38. Estepa, “Monterey Park ‘Harmony’ Panel Turns Into Debate.”

own side by racializing the discussion, not the best representative for the developer interest either. Although race is helpful for understanding the events of Monterey Park, its perspective could only give an incomplete picture of how development figured. As Heikkila revealed, development issues in the San Gabriel Valley went beyond race because they affected the entire region, all its ethnic and non-ethnic parts. To be fair, there were racist elements within RAMP, in their rhetoric, and in the candidates they campaigned for, but accusations of racism against anti-development efforts were often mounted by people like Hsieh to deliberately obscure real issues at hand: elementary schools in double sessions, condos blotting out the sun, and blocked roads. Residents could have brought attention to these issues regardless of the race or creed of Monterey Park’s immigrants, as homeowners were doing across Southern California. As with all of Los Angeles County at the time, Monterey Park’s primary issue with development was finding how to handle sudden inflows of capital, people, and wealth brought on by changes in the broader political economy.

In RAMP’s defense, their intentions were anti-development and not anti-immigrant.

After the passages of Propositions K and L, the City Council took the initiative to solve its development and tax revenue problems.

They established Proposition Q, which would rezone Monterey Park’s downtown Atlantic Boulevard into a controlled development zone managed by the city. Controlled development would have brought in higher volume, higher quality businesses and replenished the city’s tax base, but Irv Volume 5, Fall 2018 | 35

Gilman, spokesman of RAMP at the time, objected: “We’re not for making Atlantic Boulevard into Wilshire Boulevard. We don’t want high-rise office buildings. High-rise is inappropriate in Monterey Park.”39 Gilman’s comments demonstrated that whether it was Hsieh’s profits or the city’s goodwill, RAMP opposed development at its every instance.

What is clear is that Monterey Park’s longtime residents had settled into their homes not expecting that their lives would change so quickly. City planner Bob Dawson’s argument that rampant development was exaggerated weakens RAMP’s stance.

However, the data, trends, and stories speak for themselves. Jon Elder, the city’s police chief, recalled nights in the city: “When I worked graveyard in this city from 1960 to 1968, we’d call them ‘cannonball nights’. You could shoot a cannon off at Atlantic and Garvey, and it could fly through the air and roll to a stop without hitting a soul. Those days are long gone. The other night I was out at 3:30 in the morning, and I counted 34 cars stopped at a red light at Atlantic and Garvey.”40 Janice Shyer and her husband, liberals who marched in the Civil Rights Movement, felt uncomfortable about planning to leave, not wanting to seem like racists. Even “Kaffeeklatsch,” a time-honored Monterey Park tradition had been ruined.

Every weekday morning for the past forty years, the city fathers would gather at the local Paris’ diner. Now, Chinese developers owned Paris’ and the city fathers had become 39. Alan Maltun, “Developer Sues to Overturn City Growth Limits,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1984.

40. Arax, “Monterey Park: Nation’s 1st Suburban Chinatown.”

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old men.41 Monterey Park was changing and its long-time residents were worried for the present and the future. They had legitimate concerns, not just racial fears.

Culture War On the other hand, at the same time Hsieh was transforming Monterey Park, the city was also gaining a reputation as a “banking center for wealthy immigrants.”42 In 1979, Anthony Tang opened a bank oriented towards Chinese customers, which was one of only two banks that offered Chinesefriendly service at the time. Five years later, during Monterey Park’s economic boom, there would be eleven other similar banks.

In total, their combined deposits increased more than seven-fold in the span of five years, from $50 million to $380 million. As Tang put it, “You can’t believe the big money that is coming in.”43 The financial deepening of Monterey Park, the aforementioned real estate practice of sub-division, and the 1965 immigration wave set the conditions for the expansion of Chinese immigrant-owned businesses.

Popular Asian ezine AsianWeek’s profile of Monterey Park as “The Chinese Beverly Hills” described the extent of the city’s transformation into what sounded like a Chinatown: A Diho market, an Asian supermarket-chain store that sells fresh fish, live crabs, rice, and other Asian food, anchors a strip mall on At41. Ibid.

42. Jesus Sanchez, “Monterey Park Becomes Banking Center for Wealthy Immigrants,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1984.

43. Sanchez, “Monterey Park Becomes Banking Center for Wealthy Immigrants.”

lantic and El Portal. Across from the mall are rows of professional offices, banks, and more shops. NBC Seafood Restaurant, one of the finest restaurants in the city, is also on Atlantic …

The imposing Atlantic Place Shopping Center, with its red-tile roof and distinctly Chinese architecture, sits northwest of the intersection, a citadel to the growing business influence of the Chinese American community ... Around the Atlantic Place Shopping Center are scores of other Chinese businesses-music stores, hair salons, restaurants, and realty companies. Chinese signs dot both sides of Garvey all the way to Garfield Avenue. According to the Monterey Park Chamber of Commerce, within the city’s 7.7-square-mile limits, there are more than 60 Chinese restaurants, more than 50 realty companies, several Chinese supermarkets, scores of dental, medical, accounting and legal offices, and dozens of shopping centers. Of the city’s more than 5,000 businesses, the Chinese own at least two-thirds of them, according to the Chamber. 44

In 1985, the same year Monterey Park was called a “City of Bridges,” two White, antiimmigrant, nationalist activists who had their political beginnings in the anti-development campaign began gaining momentum. They started an English-only movement to have all businesses in Monterey Park write their signs in English. The first person was Barry Hatch, a social studies teacher who had served as a missionary in Hong Kong.45 He was famous for, among other things, opposing the inclusion of mariachi bands in a Fourth of July celebration, calling for a national ban on immigration, and proposing that the city erect a statue of George Washington to remind foreigners about American values.46 Hatch claimed Asian immigrants had told 44. Eljera, “The Chinese Beverly Hills.”

45. Ibid.

46. Berkley Hudson, “Pride or Prejudice?,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1989.

him that “we don’t care about your culture, your institutions, your traditions and your history. We’re here to make money.”47 The second activist Frank Arcuri made his debut when he crashed a city council meeting in the style of the Boston Tea Party. Two of his associates dressed as Native Americans and held signs saying “no development without representation.”48 Arcuri worked as a photographer, although he wanted to be a college professor but was never hired, he said, because of affirmative action.49 Like his partner Hatch, Arcuri had similar opinions about the Chinese: “They’re putting their signs in Chinese because they think their language and customers are superior to ours.

There’s a feeling of cultural superiority. Why do you think so many Chinese businessmen open Chinese restaurants instead of American ones?”50 Both Hatch and Arcuri’s performances as provocative publicityhounds were rewarded by extensive Los Angeles Times coverage: Hatch with an article called “The World According to Hatch,” and Arcuri with “Arcuri Sees Self as Rocky of ‘Politics.’”

Hatch and Arcuri teamed up to obtain 3,300 signatures (more than the 1,000 they needed) on a petition that declared English the official language of Monterey 47. Berkley Hudson, “Heavily Asian Town’s Mayor Holds Tight to Controversial Views,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1989.

48. Ward, “Condo Ban Backers Vow to ‘Stop All the Garbage Going Up.’” 49. Mike Ward, “Arcuri Sees Self as ‘Rocky’ of Politics,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1986.

50. Mark Arax, “Stronger Rules on English in Signs Pushed by Council,” Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1985.

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Park.51 Because there was popular support behind the bill, the Councilmembers felt forced to pass stronger rules requiring businesses to identify themselves in common English terms like “bakery, dental office, or preschool.”52 Irvin Lai of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance was deeply uncomfortable with this new policy and sent a letter to the Times, writing that “[a] t the present, many Asian people continue to daily confront racial stereotypes and expectations that society has perpetuated …

It is an unfair and a wrongful assumption to single out and blame particular people groups on the present ills of society.”53 In response to similar direct and indirect accusations, Hatch always said that he was not a racist, but for many of Monterey Park’s immigrants who read his press statements, it was alarmingly clear that Hatch was either lying or had fundamental disagreements about what it meant to be an American. The Hatch-Arcuri camp refused to define American citizenship as anything other than assimilation into the country’s predominant White culture. Their rhetoric proved so divisive to the normally peaceful Monterey Park community that after a pro-immigrant rally presented a resolution declaring “harmony and understanding the official language of Monterey Park,” the Councilmembers rescinded their language restriction resolution. Barry Hatch, who was at the time also a city councilman, was one of 51. Mike Ward, “English Issue Backers Amend Ballot Petition,” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1985.

52. Arax, “Stronger Rules on English in Signs Pushed

by Council.”

53. Irvin R Lai, “Hatch Comments on Immigrants,” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1989.

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two dissenting votes.54 Hatch and Arcuri’s racist interlude proved that although affluence had facilitated Chinese immigration to the US, money could also create new racial conflicts. Since Asian immigrants to the US had capital, they carried the enhanced threat of crowding out older residents who were White and spoke English. Money empowered immigrants to occupy more physical and cultural space: on streets, condominiums, workplaces, and shopping malls as well as on business signs, in schools, and libraries. As the Chinese community grew beyond its imposed limits and refused to assimilate, it pushed out the White, English-speaking power and uncovered dormant racist elements.

From then on, there was tension in the city between those who wanted to hold on to their changing way of life and those whose mere presence altered the city’s landscape.

The People of Monterey Park (The LA Times)

54. Lily Eng, “Monterey Park Struggles to Speak With One Voice on English Issue,” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1986.

Conclusion Hatch and Arcuri faded away from public life after the rescindment of their English-only rule, yet the scars of their movement remain etched into the city’s memory, a cautionary tale to future Chinese immigrants that neither money, education, nor the protections of immigration reform could save them from racism. To this day, Monterey Park and Los Angeles County struggle with overcrowding, zoning issues, and ethnic conflict.55 Seamless assimilation and the ideal of a model minority, it seemed, were only myths.

After all, the minorities in Monterey Park were not the Chinese. In 1966, White homeowners in Monterey Park succeeded in blocking the city council’s development proposals. Less than twenty years later, Chinese immigrants, empowered by their newfound wealth, had displaced White people as the city’s dominant social and economic group.

Rather than a failure of assimilation on part of the city’s new residents, it was the older, English-speaking, White residents like Hatch 55. “Housing Needs.” City of Monterey Park: Housing Needs. July 17, 2011. Accessed March 12, 2018. https:// web.archive.org/web/20110717011110/http://www. ci.monterey-park.ca.us/index.aspx?page=726.

and Arcuri who had become uncomfortable with the times, their familiar social status shaken by deeper changes that Chinese restaurants and shopping centers were only the face of. Monterey Park, while an arm’s length from all the urban hubbub, was still too close to the city, and it was only time before newcomers began moving in that the quaint town would evolve into a suburb of Los Angeles. With roles reversed, the Chinese majority “assimilated” by crowding out older residents, leading Monterey Park in a new direction.

The events in Monterey Park are thus representative of larger changes taking place around the country involving immigration, finance, development, and suburbanization—processes that are not finished. As America’s urban population continues to move to the suburbs and as the country itself gradually becomes majority minority, opposing forces will meet and as history has shown, the resulting developments will not necessarily be frictionless, equitable, or inclusive. Something more, at least, is needed along the lines of adjustment efforts than planned lunch outings for a city to truly deserve the honor of “All-America.”

Bibliography “Anti-Growth Initiatives Filed in Monterey Park.” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1982.

Arax, Mark. “Monterey Park: Nation’s 1st Suburban Chinatown.” Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1987.

------. “Stronger Rules on English in Signs Pushed by Council.” Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1985.

Barber, Mary. “Monterey Park Growth Lid Sought.” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1981.

------. “Growth and Safety Dominate Election.” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1982.

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------. “Legal Tests Seen for Props. L, K.” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1982.

Berthelsen, Christian. “Frederic Hsieh Is Dead at 54; Made Asian-American Suburb.” New York Times, August 20, 1999.

Eljera, Bert. “The Chinese Beverly Hills.” AsianWeek, May 2430, 1996.

Eng, Lily. “Monterey Park Struggles to Speak With One Voice on English Issue.” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1986.

Estepa, Andrea. “Monterey Park ‘Harmony’ Panel Turns Into Debate.” Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1987.

“Homeowners Ready Protest: Monterey Park Residents Seek to Block Apartments.” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1963.

“Housing Needs.” City of Monterey Park: Housing Needs.

July 17, 2011. Accessed March 12, 2018. https://web.archive. org/web/20110717011110/http://www.ci.monterey-park.ca.us/ index.aspx?page=726.

Hudson, Berkley. “Heavily Asian Town’s Mayor Holds Tight to Controversial Views.” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1989.

------. “Judge Upholds Growth Limit.” Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1989.

------. “Pride or Prejudice?” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1989.

Lai, Irvin R. “Hatch Comments on Immigrants.” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1989.

Maltun, Alan. “Developer Sues to Overturn City Growth Limits.” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1984.

Pettersen, William. “Success Story, Japanese-American Style.”

New York Times, January 9, 1966.

Sanchez, Jesus. “Monterey Park Becomes Banking Center for Wealthy Immigrants.” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1984.

Segal, Uma Anand. A Framework for Immigration: Asians in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

So, Frank S. Condominium. Information Report no. 159.

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Bureau, 2010.

Ward, Mike. “3 Councilmen Hit by Ouster Effort in Monterey Park.” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1986.

------. “Cities Report Growth—and Some Losses—From Asian Business.” Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1987.

------. “Arcuri Sees Self as ‘Rocky’ of Politics.” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1986.

------. “Condo Ban Backers Vow to ‘Stop All the Garbage Going Up.’” Los Angeles Times, Oct 17, 1985.

------. “English Issue Backers Amend Ballot Petition.” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1985.

------. “Helping Asian Immigrants Proves to Be the American Way: Monterey Park: a City of Bridges.” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1985.

------. “Monterey Park Housing Limit Pains Developers.”

Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1985.

------. “Monterey Park’s New Council Calls Halt to Building.” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1986.

Xiang, Biao. “Emigration Trends and Policies in China: Movement of the Wealthy and Highly Skilled.”

Migration Policy Institute, February 2016, 11-12.

Reimagining the Gaps: Counter-Memory Making and Filmic Documentation SeungHyun Chung, University of Pennsylvania ‘19 This paper explores the role of filmic documentation, specifically home videos, in a community’s collective memory and uses a formal framework to analyze the lack of documentation among Asian American communities.

Through my fieldwork with the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival’s “Memories to Light” Initiative, I form a concept called “counter-memory making,” an intervention among community archives and film festivals that treats the lack of filmic documentation among Asian American communities as a process to activate circulation, curation, and collaboration among community members. Counter-memory making pays attention to what is not recorded and enacted in the present. Using a non-representational theory that looks beyond the content of films, I argue that the lack of home videos and the desire to search home videos both serve as elements of counter-memory making.

Introduction and Methodology Sitting at her work table inside the dimly-lit Archives room of the Penn Museum, Katherine “Kate” Pourshariati laments about having forgotten to document most of her own family’s life. “Have you heard of the phrase ‘peddler’s children go shoeless’? It means that someone who is in a certain field somehow neglects their own self and their family. It’s really terrible,” she says.1 Kate has worked as a film archivist for the Penn Museum since 2006, collecting and curating films covering various indigenous cultures and time periods. Kate and I met through a general board meeting for the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (PAAFF), where she prescreens documentary submissions and volunteers for the “Memories to Light” Initiative. She chuckles at her own ironic position as an archivist who has little documentation of her own family history. However, her sentiments seem to reflect something much larger: an ambivalent, yet deeply human need to document our lives and memories. Why do we document, anyway? What can documentation do for us that a recall of memories cannot achieve? Specifically, what role does documentation—through such means as films and home videos—perform for underrepresented, minority communities? I frame these questions through the lens of collective memory, or what Maurice Halbwachs articulates as a “continuous current of thought, of a continuity that is by no means artificial … [but] conserves nothing from the past except the parts which still live or are capable of living in the conscience of the group.”2 As Halbwachs highlights, collective memory is not of the “past,” but a product of the present. Both choice and chance affect what to remember and what to forget, shaping the I. Katherine Pourshariati. “Meditations on the Archive.” Interview by author. April 19, 2017.

2. Maurice Halbwachs, On collective memory, (University of Chicago Press, 1992), 89.

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collective memory that will become the foundation of a community’s collective identity. Incorporating my fieldwork at PAAFF’s “Memories to Light” Initiative, I will outline an alternative approach to analyzing what filmic documentations do for a community’s collective memory— namely, a non-representational theory that pays attention to the limitations of film, but also characterizes documentations and archives of the film community as processes that activate circulation, curation, and collaboration among Asian American communities. Such activation and analysis are critical to perform what I call countermemory making, or a community of color’s production of stories that complicate the homogenizing narrative that mainstream society projects on the community. Countermemory making fills the gaps in hidden and undocumented communal histories, ultimately allowing a more nuanced reimagination of collective identity for such communities.

I initially conducted my fieldwork by volunteering for PAAFF’s “Memories to Light” Initiative, a storytelling project in partnership with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), during the spring of 2017. The Initiative aims to collect, compile, and digitize home videos—8mm, 16mm, and super 8mm films—from various Asian American communities across the United States with the goal of making them accessible for public viewing. Focusing on the period between the 1920s and the 1980s, “Memories to Light” hopes to: collectively and aesthetically construct shared 42 | UNFOUND

social, cultural, and political representations of Asian America directly from the community itself. At the heart of this project is how collective memory can be amassed and sustained through interactive participation.3

A selection of the digitized home videos can be viewed online. These videos, largely portraying everyday slices of family life, depict both Western-cultural occasions and Asian-specific events. Films feature babies taking their first steps, an elementary student’s graduation, and even a Japanese American family’s New Year celebration with mochi pounding. These home videos, in Erving Goffman’s terms, offer a lens into Asian Americans’ “backstage,” or a space in which a person can recede from the usual norms and standards of an audience or public.4 Goffman describes the opposite as performances of the “front,” or activities “which regularly function[] in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance.”5 This behavioral distinction, in the context of documentation, can be re-interpreted as the public “front” and the private “backstage.”

Home videos—through its digital circulation and collection in community archives such as CAAM and PAAFF—merge the two by allowing the audience of the “front” to see a “backstage” performance that had originally been intended for private audiences. These digitized documentations 3. About » Memories To Light.” Memories to Light. https://caamedia.org/memoriestolight/about/. Accessed April 25, 2017.

4. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, (Edinburgh: Social Sciences Research Centre, 1956), 69.

5. Ibid., 13.

derive their power from the way they normalize the Asian American presence, as they offer an empathic gaze toward ordinary Asian American families. For the non-Asian American audience, “Memories to Light” disrupts the stereotypical, orientalist depictions of Asian Americans as foreign and exotic through these filmed performances of the everyday.

My fieldwork for “Memories to Light” involved searching for home videos across the South Asian and Korean American communities in Philadelphia. I traveled to various organizations serving these respective Asian American communities, including Twelve Gates Arts, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), and Society of Young Korean Americans (SYKA). I also attended Korean churches and the Subaru Sakura Festival to expand outreach to and increase interest among community members. Unfortunately, the three-month long search in Philadelphia yielded only a few leads and no concrete home videos. The problem was not a lack of interest—rather, many people did not have home videos. Multiple factors played into my failed search. Most of the home videos that CAAM had collected in the West Coast came from Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino communities, while very few were found among Korean, Vietnamese, South Asian, and Pacific Islander communities.

This situation testified to the greater historical fact that for Korean and South Asian communities, mass migration to the United States and formation of families did not occur until the late 1980s and ’90s—

beyond the time frame that “Memories to Light” sought. Korean migration to the US increased primarily in the early ’80s and ’90s, a time when South Korea faced a dictatorial president as well as a shift from an agricultural-based economy to an industrial one. 6 Particularly in Philadelphia, only a handful of first-generation Korean Americans—usually students and professionals—migrated to the city in the ’60s and ’70s.7 On the other hand, South Asian migration to Philadelphia increased steadily in the ’80s, with Pakistani migration to the United States increasing after the Gulf War of 1991. Indians became the seventh largest foreign-born group in Philadelphia in 1990, as many Indian immigrants also came through the occupational category as part of the Immigration Act of 1965.8 The Indian population in Philadelphia grew in the twenty-first century in particular, bringing in high-skilled male workers and a good portion of female nurses from Kerala.9 In short, the migration histories of both the South Asian and Korean communities in Philadelphia do not fully overlap with the period that “Memories to Light” was seeking. Furthermore, the 6. Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, A new history of Asian America, (New York: Routledge, 2013), 319.

7. Jae-Hyup Lee, Dynamics of ethnic identity: Three Asian American communities in Philadelphia, (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998), 55.

8. Audrey Singer, et al. “Recent immigration to Philadelphia: Regional change in a re-emerging gateway.” Survey Series for the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings (2008): 8.

9. Ayumi Takenaka and Mary Johnson Osirim, “Philadelphia’s immigrant communities in historical perspective.” Global Philadelphia. Immigrant Communities Old and New (2010): 10.

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fact that not enough families had formed by the 1980s reveals the way home videos pigeonhole a certain frame of memories: namely, that of family representation. As the collection of home videos from the West Coast demonstrates, the need to document the everyday largely comes from familial motivations and interactions. Migrants of the ’70s and ’80s to the East Coast— single men and professionals for the most part —did not have a reason to film regularly without rooted communal and familial relationships.

Unexpected personal difficulties further accompanied the search. As the only Korean American in the “Memories to Light” committee, I attempted to tap into the Korean church network through my Korean American friends at the University of Pennsylvania. This was a logical choice to take for the search, since Korean American communities have predominantly been constructed around churches. In particular, the nondenominational college church has offered the ultimate comfort zone for Korean American college students to build ethnic communities.10 My requests to be put in contact with the local Emmanuel Church and Penn’s Grace Covenant Church, however, were met with reluctance by my friends. One friend, Julie S. (name changed for privacy), warned me, “I’d just be cautious about kind of going about it as gathering info for a documentary rather than religious reasons.” I quickly clarified that I was not going to make “a documentary,” but was

simply collecting home videos from Korean American families. The implications, however, were clear. To enter the church space with the purpose of a film project translated to a form of invasion. Even if I was not actually bringing a camera to the church, Julie S.’s sentiments carried a hesitancy that resonates with Susan Sontag’s comment on the uneasy presence and power of a camera: “to photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed”—a statement that also applies to the potentially otherizing position of ethnographic filmmaking.11 What particularly surprised me was the way Julie S. implicitly labeled me as an outsider; my status as an agnostic Korean American denied me entry to a Korean space that was coded as exclusively Christian.

“Memories to Light” Initiative’s focus on 8mm, 16mm, and super 8mm films came about as another limitation to the search.

While attending a panel and symposium for SYKA and SAADA respectively, I sought out individuals to ask for any trace of home videos in their households. Many people responded that their families did indeed have them. However, those videos turned out to be VHS videos, not the listed films that “Memories to Light” searched for. This prevalence of VHS parallels the history of recording technology; as the material of film began to fall out of picture in the

last quarter of the twentieth century, the number of video cassette recorders (VCR) in the US increased from 1.8 million to 86 million between 1980 and 1995.12 VHS was not only easier to use than traditional film, but also more affordable. A family had to be somewhat financially well-off to own a film camera and projector in the first place, excluding certain working-class immigrant and refugee communities that migrated to Philadelphia near the end of the time frame set out by “Memories to Light.” To be able to document a family’s life also requires a sense of financial and emotional stability, which refugee communities may particularly have lacked. I came across a similar limitation while searching for home videos at the Subaru Sakura Festival. This was an event that brought in not only Asian Americans, but also the wider public. Once again, very few Asian Americans had traces to these films, while a greater number of nonAsian American visitors expressed interest in donating their home videos. Already, historical patterns of migration, social class, and technological limitations privileged certain groups to be able to record and create such home videos more than others.

Considering these limitations of filmic documentation as elements of collective memory requires a shift in the theoretical focus. When treating these films as analytic frameworks, one must consider not just what the camera frame privileges, but simultaneously what is not being filmed.

To think of merely the content and the

10. Nancy Abelmann, The intimate university: Korean American students and the problems of segregation.

(Duke University Press, 2009), 43.

11. Susan Sontag, On photography, (Rosetta Books, 2005), 10.

12. Brian Winston, Media, technology and society: A history: From the telegraph to the Internet, (London: Routledge, 2002), 126.

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representations depicted in these home videos fails to address the materiality and embodied actions surrounding the creation and collection of such videos.

Non-representational theory offers a framework concerning itself more with “mundane everyday practices that shape the conduct of human beings toward others and themselves in particular sites” and not simply the products of such practices.13 It is a theory that pays attention to “processes that operate before … conscious, reflect thought” and emphasizes the “necessity of not prioritizing representations as the primary epistemological vehicles through which knowledge is extracted from the world.”14 This theory can be applied to categorize filmic documentation as fluid processes, both human and material. These processes activate discourse, circulation, and interaction among public members that enable an altogether different form of community. The failed search within the South Asian and Korean communities changed my focus from pursuing the “Memories to Light” mission to interviewing this alternative community—specifically, three figures from the Asian American film/ archiving community in Philadelphia: Rob Buscher, Kate Pourshariati, and Samip Mallick. Rob Buscher has been the director for the Philadelphia Asian American Film 13. Nigel Thrift, “The Still Point.” In Geographies of Resistance, edited by Steve Pile and Michael Keith, (London: Routledge, 1997), 126-27.

14. Derek P. McCormack, “Diagramming practice and performance.” Environment and planning D: society and space23, no. 1 (2005): 122.

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Festival (PAAFF) since June 2014 and is an important member of the local Asian American film community. His work has involved planning the annual 11-day Festival every autumn, as well as the multitude of programming throughout the year geared towards artists, filmmakers, sponsors, and communities of color. Samip Mallick is the co-founder and Executive Director for the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), a community archive that digitizes documents such as films, photographs, letters, and oral interviews on the South Asian American experience. Lastly, Kate Pourshariati, as previously introduced, is the film archivist at the Penn Museum and a fellow volunteer for PAAFF. These three figures fulfill significant roles in the Asian American film community, testifying to how the processes, relationships, and actions of their respective organizations shape a community’s collective memory.

The non-representational frame must first be situated on a foundation of how archives and home videos validate communities of color. Michelle Caswell outlines the impact that community archives have on minority communities, terming it as “representational belonging,” or providing ontological, epistemological, and social validation.15 Citing SAADA as her case study, Caswell argues that community archives validate the sense of being for marginalized communities and provide an empirical substantiation to prove and 15. Michelle Caswell, et al. “‘To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: community archives and the importance of representation.” Archives and Records (2016a): 16.

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establish a community’s historical trajectory and presence. For example, South Asian Americans effectively experience SAADA as countering “symbolic annihilation,” or the erasure, silencing, and mis-portrayal of marginalized minority communities in mainstream media.16 Instead, to see oneself reflected in an archive allows a community of color to feel that their existence is part of a greater historical continuity. Samip speaks along similar lines of what it means for him to create and work at SAADA: I’ve connected with a lot of people who talk about how SAADA’s work has got them more interested in their own family stories and community stories and that’s really rewarding—the fact that people are now thinking more and more about their own stories … I didn’t grow up knowing these histories, so it makes me feel more connected … that sense of rootlessness—it’s one way to confront that. It’s to recognize the importance of our stories.17

Samip not only narrates his own emotional validation from understanding his South Asian American heritage and presence in history, but also engages in a new discourse among other newly-motivated South Asian Americans. The confrontation of “rootlessness” can be interpreted as counter-memory making—an attempt to replace the silences imposed upon South Asian American history. What SAADA enables is an example of what Michael Warner calls a counterpublic, or a “space of 16. Michelle Caswell, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez, “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives 1.”

The American Archivist 79.1 (2016b): 56.

17. Samip Mallick. “SAADA’s Principles.” Interview by author. April 19, 2017.

discursive circulation among strangers as a social entity” that challenges the hierarchy of modern discourse.18 Kate’s comments on what a digital archive enables align with this formation of a counterpublic: The digital [archiving] has obviously the advantage that everyone can see it faster … the access is fantastic. People from all over the world are seeing these films … and they’re seeing like their town, their hometown, and they just love them. And we get beautiful comments from all around the world … of people just … so excited to see how their time used to look.19

While counterpublics are not necessarily communities, they similarly engage an oppressed group of strangers in a shared discourse across space and time.

Digitization, as Kate mentions, expands the power to enable such a discourse through its networked access. Along the same line of thought, the search for home videos activates a new discourse, an action that deserves as much attention as the filmic dfdocumentations themselves. Rob articulates a similar message to that of Samip regarding the purpose of “Memories to Light”: “Memories to Light” campaign is kind of an extension of the idea of Asian American cinema as a movement … when we look at the lived experiences and the histories of various Asian American communities that have been in this country … there is this entire counter-narrative to what mainstream cinema and mainstream cinema tell us … that we are perpetually foreign, that we don’t have roots in this country, that we’re 18. Michael Warner. “Publics and counterpublics.”

Public culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 87.

19. Pourshariati, 2017.

not true Americans … when we have these types of artifacts from history to really show to the general public at large … this is when we can really start creating a dent in how people perceive our communities. 20

This categorization of cinema as movement—an active process—once again puts actions into the forefront. What nonrepresentational theory underscores is precisely the way both the failure to find home videos and the desire to search home videos constitute themselves performances of counter-memory making. Filmic documentation inevitably mediates these processes, allowing a new counter-discourse to be enabled in a community even without the content matters itself.

Institutional power has often overshadowed marginalized stories of communities of color and has been the perpetrator of historical revisionism and collective silence. Caswell distinguishes institutional “mainstream archives” from community archives, defining mainstream ones as “archival institutions that either do not collect materials created by marginalized communities or that do not involve the communities themselves in a decision-making capacity in collecting those materials.”21 Kate describes the Penn Archive as a “treasure trove,” as the Archive does not discriminate and collects all forms of marginalized histories.22 The Archive makes these records available for scholars and students. However, the requirement for the Penn Archive is that one must seek the information out before even knowing that 20. Rob Buscher. “PAAFF and ‘Memories to Light.’”

Interview by author. April 18, 2017 21. Michelle Caswell et al. (2016a), 7.

22. Pourshariati, 2017.

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they exist. Samip adds to this by comparing SAADA and larger institutions such as the Penn Museum Archive: Certain histories aren’t priorities for various reasons. Histories that are marginalized are not often priorities of large institutions and is often dependent on the communities themselves to advocate for their stories and their histories … our primary focus is on the community history. 23

Samip underscores that community archives like SAADA curate documentations of marginalized histories for people to first recognize that these histories exist. It initiates the epistemological and ontological understanding to further expand the discourse to recognize and record South Asian American stories. Broad, institutional archives, even when possessing documents of marginalized histories, may easily frame these histories out of the dominant picture with or without intent.

Mainstream institutional archives, in Jacque Derrida’s words, are at once “institutive and conservative … revolutionary and traditional.”24 Samip adds an important self-awareness to both community and mainstream archives: I do think that’s it’s important that large institutions … to be very self-critical on thinking about histories that are not reflected in their collections and for SAADA as well.

We must be self-critical that we may have overlooked [certain histories] and work to sharing those stories … if we don’t do it, no one else will.25

This ability for self-criticism becomes key 23. Mallick, 2017.

24. Jacque Derrida, quoted in Blouin, Francis X., and William G. Rosenberg, eds. Archives, documentation, and institutions of social memory: essays from the Sawyer Seminar. (University of Michigan Press, 2011), 1.

25. Mallick, 2017.

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not only to change a community’s collective memory, but ultimately, to also stretch solidarity to other underrepresented narratives across communities of color.

The Asian American film community enables Pan-ethnic interaction across communities of color. Rob’s role as Festival Director has involved creating programs beyond just the on-screen experience, carrying out events such as music concerts, food tastings, visual arts exhibits, and performances. PAAFF serves both as an avenue to showcase Asian American films and a space to host a shared discussion of Asian American narratives and histories with publics among diverse communities of color. He states: We find ourselves building bridges not just in the Pan-Asian community, but really looking out into other communities of color and the white majority … working with our sister festivals Black Star and PHLAFF [Philadelphia Latino American Film Festival] … one of the fundamental concerns has always been: how do we create true solidarity among communities of color and among the public at large? It’s not something that happens overnight … to have these conversations around things that are lowpressure like food, film, music—this is when we can sit down and have real dialogue in a way that’s not forced and natural. 26

What Buscher highlights is the role of the Film Festival in activating discourse across a diverse group of audience members through the Festival’s seemingly mundane activities. The Festival’s non-Asian American demographic has also shifted in the past three years from 25% to 40%, showcasing the growing interest among people outside of 26. Buscher, 2017.

the APA community. PAAFF as a practice becomes a source to activate dialogue, interaction, and interest in the same physical space while providing a venue to circulate Asian American narratives and films. Kate comments similarly: “It’s also multicultural within an Asian context. There’s a lot of Asian communities represented in the general body [of PAAFF].”27 As volunteer members of the general body, Kate and I have both observed the way a variety of Asian American experiences are represented not only in the film narratives, but also within the people working and volunteering for the festival.

PAAFF highlights diversity, inclusion, and a “shared racial fate” to mark the way it serves as a counter-hegemonic film festival and represents a significant part of the Asian American movement.28 This interaction and circulation of discourse become key actions to understanding the role of filmic documentation in counter-memory making.

Recently, SAADA has established a year-long initiative titled Where We Belong: Artists in the Archive to understand how collaboration between artists and archives can help develop a new platform for marginalized narratives and communities. Samip speaks on this initiative: We’ve always been thinking about how do we collaborate journalists, activists, and artists … by remixing or reimagining materials in the archive, artists can enhance their value 27. Pourshariati, 2017.

28. Nazli Kibria, “The contested meanings of ‘Asian American’: Racial dilemmas in the contemporary US.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21.5 (1998): 946.

… there is a lot of potential in thinking about how these artists and materials … activate.

When you view a record in the archive, or read an article about it, or share it with someone, it is being activated. It is being brought to life. That’s what the artists are also doing.

They’re activating the materials in the archive and bringing them into life in different kinds of ways. I think there’s a lot of potential not just by artists, but also activists, journalists, academics, and community members to bring these materials into people’s’ lives. 29

Samip’s words testify to the way that filmic documentation not only enables an altogether different community to collaborate, but also opens a channel to reimagine a community’s collective memory. Reimagination culminates the process of counter-memory making, as filmic documentation becomes interwoven with present actions to show past marginalized histories in a new light. One musician-artist in SAADA’s initiative, Zain Alam, has combined a home video in the archive with his own Hindustani music and indie rock to create an alternative medium that engages the experience of collective memory. This interactive transition from filmic documentation to art-making comes back to PAAFF’s main purpose: to recognize how artists and filmmakers creatively imagine narratives of their own Asian American communities to replace the homogenizing image of the model-minority myth and other harmful stereotypes.

Though “Memories to Light” for PAAFF is currently in no way complete or successful, this ethnographic project has revealed hidden nuances and histories behind filmic documentations themselves. Multiple theories of understanding documentation, 29. Mallick, 2017.

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narrative, and archive function under nonrepresentational theory, which underscores processes and embodied actions behind filmic documentation and organization. As the three members of the Asian American film community have testified, PAAFF, SAADA, and the nature of filmic documentation enable new curation, collaboration, and circulation that promote a Pan-Asian/Pan-ethnic identity and a reimagination of silenced and marginalized histories. These actions and processes of memory-making become as critical for analysis and attention as the stories contained within the films.

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