Television Review: Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, on PBS (2 of 2)

Becoming American: The Chinese Experience includes in our story the pain and the heartache that are rooted in the racism Chinese Americans have faced throughout our history. The series draws heavily on chronicling the details and the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and its roots in the shameful backwardness of Kearneyism, which infected the US labor movement for decades. It chronicles the unequal treatment of Chinese railroad workers compared to their white counterparts, and the excruciating interrogation of Angel Island. The series spins these national events into the stories of individual families and sojourners, detailing the impact of such events in the creation of Chinese American bachelor society and the separation of families.

What I like most about Moyers’ series is that not only does it unearth and remind us of the pain of our history, it reminds us that time and time again, Chinese Americans rose up to fight their oppression. Contrary to the stereotype of our people as cheek-turning, obsequious cowards, Becoming American shows how Chinese railroad workers organized to strike against the bosses, who paid the white workers more and expected less from them. It shows how our forebearers turned the legal system on itself to fight blatantly anti-Chinese laws and ordinances, such as housing density laws enforced only in the young Chinatowns of the country. It tells the story of how Chinese Americans resourcefully seized upon the burning of records in the great San Francisco fire to create ways for our “brothers” and “sisters” to circumvent the anti-Chinese immigration laws. The series shows not only our pain but the creativity and strength Chinese Americans demonstrated while resisting this oppression.

Though the series bears Moyers’ name, and certainly he was instrumental in the making of it, it is also clear that Chinese Americans had the main hand in the production, and most importantly, the viewpoint of the show. Though I would like to see more productions that are wholly FUBU (for us, by us), in the scheme of Bushamerica these days, Becoming American is worth promoting.