The Vanishing Chinese in American History Essay examples -- American A

The Vanishing Chinese in American narrativeOur agriculturals chronicle is filled with stories that are neglected the Japanese Americans who were held against their will in internment camps during World War II, African-American pilots who fought bravely for our country during the second World War, Native Americans who sacrificed their lives in self-abnegation of territory that was rightfully theirs, and Chinese immigrants who toiled to build the western leg of the transcontinental railroad in the nineteenth century. Typical of this silencing of stories in American history is the exclusion of Chinese idea sonsyoung men, many in their beforehand(predicate) teens, who came to this country with papers that fraudulently established their family relations to an American-born or established father. The paper son phenomenon is not unusual in the history of the Chinese in America it was a common way to get almost the discriminatory immigration laws that prevented many Chinese from coming to the United States. Thus, the stories of paper sons should be told as we examine the racist attitudes and policies toward the people who built, shaped, and changed America on board European immigrants. As former U.S. Congressman Norm Mineta so eloquently puts it, When one hears Americans tell of the immigrants who built this nation, one is led to believe that exclusively our forebears come from Europe. When one hears stories about the pioneers going West to shape the land, the Asiatic immigrant is rarely mentioned (Takaki 6). We need to acknowledge the contributions of extraordinary individualspaper sons such as my uncle, Stanley Hom Lau, who left their families and homeland behind to establish new roots and who do America the unique salad bowl it is today. ... ...ide of the Pacific to the other and have opportunities they never dreamed possible. The voices of paper sons like Stanley Hom Lau should not be silenced they should be included in history books because these people are an important broker of U.S. historyas important as the Irish, German and Russian immigrants were to this country at the turn of the century. For, as Americans, we originally came from many different shores (Takaki)Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia. whole shebang Cited Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans An Interpretive History. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1991. Lai, H. Mark and Choy, Philip P. Outlines History of the Chinese in America. San Francisco Fong Brothers, 1971. Lau, Stanley. Personal Interview. May 2-3, 1997. Takaki, Ronald. Strangers From a Different Shore A History of Asian Americans. New York Penguin Books, 1989.