Crossing Race and Nationality (10 of 13)

Exclusion, Enclaves, and the Class Composition of Asians

Exclusion also had a major impact on the gender and class compositions of the Asian communities, which continues to resonate today.

First of all, since the vast majority of the first immigrants of each of the Asian nationalities were male laborers who left their families behind, exclusion tended to freeze in place the overwhelming male composition of these communities and stunted the growth of a U.S.-born Asian population.

Second, anti-Asian hostility and riots, combined with exclusion, forced the Asian peoples to band together into Japantowns, Chinatowns, and Manilatowns where the prevailing conditions promoted a large class of small entrepreneurs (merchants, farmers, labor contractors, restaurateurs, etc.) and the political and social power of that class over the workers. As regards the Chinese, for example, prior to exclusion the majority lived in agricultural areas where, by Sucheng Chan's calculations, the business and labor-contracting elite seldom exceeded 15 percent of the community. Exclusion virtually eliminated Chinese laborers in small western towns and left only a smattering of Chinese restaurant or laundry owners. And it drove the majority together into Chinese enclaves within the cities where entrepreneurs and professionals constituted some 40 percent. [15]

Third, the exclusion acts banned Asian laborers, but allowed merchants, students, and their wives or families to enter the United States, thus further distorting the class composition of the communities.

Thus, the Chinatowns, Manilatowns, and Japantowns that emerged were not so much the products of “natural” social forces as the distorted outgrowth of immigration and naturalization policies that discriminated against Chinese as a people in general and against specific classes among them in particular.

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