The Study of Racialism

Liana · Guru Joined: 30 Nov 2004 {Posts: 352 }

Chinese blacks in the Americas
The United States

Chinese first started migrating to the United States in the mid-19th century. They came first for the Gold Rush, and later, as the Gold Rush waned, many Chinese continued to enter the United States as manual laborers, notably as workers on the Transcontinental railroad. The highest concentration of Chinese labor was found in the American West, with some laborers in the South. Most of the early Chinese immigrants were men.

After the Emancipation (1863), some white plantation owners in the South hired Chinese coolies to replace black slave labor. As the Reconstruction (1866-1877) came to an end, the Chinese faced racial prejudice and discrimination as Southern blacks did. Since Chinese were few in the South, many Chinese men married local non-Chinese women, including black American women. For example, the tenth census of Louisiana showed, among the 489 Chinese in the state, 28 had spouses present. Only 3 of those had China-born wives. Of the remaining, 4 married mulatto women, 12 married Negro women, 8 married white women, and 1 married an American-born Chinese.1

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed to stop the immigration of Chinese laborers. Chinese wives of Chinese laborers already residing in the States were not allowed to join their husbands. It further stated that no Chinese could become a naturalized American citizen. The law still permitted teachers, students, merchants, and tourists to enter the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act would not be repealed until 1943.

This law, and later ones like it, widened the gender imbalance in the mostly male Chinese American population. Some West Coast Chinese took African American wives like their counterparts in the South. Other Chinese men lived lonely bachelor lives in the almost all-male Chinatowns.

European Americans came to view Chinese laborers as competition for employment. The 1870s and 1880s was a period of anti-Chinese agitation by European Americans. Hundreds of Chinese men were lynched or immolated in the American West. Some fortunate Chinese escaped this fate by finding refuge in black communities, eventually settling down with African American wives.
The West Indies

In the 1860s, planters in the British West Indies imported about 18,000 Chinese to work as indentured laborers in Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica. Intermarriage with locals (Black and coloured) was not uncommon as male Chinese immigrants far outnumbered their female counterparts. By the 1946 Census (1943 in Jamaica), the Chinese numbered 12,394 in Jamaica: 2,818 China-born, 4,061 local born, 5,515 Chinese coloured (one Chinese parent). In Trinidad, there were 9,314: 2,366 China-born, 2,926 local born, 349 born abroad (from other colonies), 3,673 Chinese coloured. 2

The most famous Black/Chinese Jamaican today is probably Michael Lee-Chin, the billionaire boss of Jamaica's National Commercial Bank and the CEO of AIC.

Another well-known Chinese/Black of West Indian origin is the Trinidad-born Chris Wong Won of the rap group 2 Live Crew.

Notes:
1 Lucy M. Cohen, Chinese in the Post-Civil War South - A People Without A History, p147
2 The Hakka Chinese History
Images of black/yellow togetherness

The media promotes images of certain interracial unions above other kinds of interracial unions. Black/yellow couples or friends are often underrepresented (or not represented at all) in film and print media while images of white/yellow couples, mostly of a specific gender combination, are found everywhere in advertising, movies and books.

Black/yellow couples or friends often feel "there is no one else like us", or "no one's family or relationship looks like mine". To combat this lack of representation and the corresponding sense of isolation, colorq.org has put out a web gallery of art work representing black/yellow friends, as well as fellowship between people of all colors.