Two Opposing Views About Chinese Exclusion

 The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which lasted until 1943, was passed to prevent cheap Chinese labor from depriving Americans of work. Additional justifications included racist xenophobic views that the Chinese were inferior, unassimilable, devious, unhygienic, and immoral, to name a few.

However, there were notable defenses of the Chinese such as Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll's argument in 1899 against the unjust exclusion that fell on deaf ears. Green was a free thinker, abolitionist, and considered the foremost orator and political speechmaker of late 19th century America.

    In contrast to Ingersoll's defense of the Chinese, an article published in the Birmingham newspaper on January 3, 1911, p.17 argued for continuing the exclusion of Chinese. Using the caricature of the Chinese as a cheater who outmaneuvers two white men trying to cheat him in a card game in a poem written in 1870 by Bret Harte, Plain Language From Truthful James that was more widely known as The Heathen Chinee. The 1911Birmingham article invoked the image of the devious untrustworthy "heathen Chinee" created way back in 1870 to depicts the many sneaky ways the Chinese devised to gain entry illegally into the country. 

  

  

Many of the arguments were specious. If the Chinese were 'unassimilable,' it was not an inherent trait of the Chinese but a condition imposed by the racist barriers that denied Chinese naturalization, opportunity to testify in court, and the denial of their bringing wives and children from China, among other impediments. The closing claim, without evidence, that the Chinese had 10,000 copies made of landmarks to aid immigrants in answering questions from immigration officials was a smear against the Chinese.