The Railroad and the Diaspora

You may have noticed that I've been on something of a historical kick regarding the experience of early Chinese immigrants to the New World. In my previous post on the matter, I excerpted an essay from China Matters (which was actually about South Africa but entirely relevant to the American West) examining the explicitly racist wage-busting rationale for importing indentured non-white laborers to work on major industrial projects. White laborers, you see, had legal rights and social expectations, while imported non-white laborers had no legal recourse and were socially and culturally isolated. Indeed, wealthy industrialists purposefully incited white supremacist hate in the white working class, in order to terrorize people of color and shift the blame for wage-busting away from the capitalists themselves (and white folks think Asians are sneaky!). 

The epic story of the construction of the transcontinental railroad has been told many, many times — maybe even in your junior-high history class — but in my view it can't be told enough, because with each re-telling, we have an opportunity to deepen and thicken the dimensionality of our understanding. [ Pictured: Chinese railroad laborers in California around 1880.] I suppose this is the beauty of oral traditions: while a story's central narrative remains the same, the story's external inflection can evolve over time, and change with the times, continually drawing afresh on a living wisdom that's difficult if not impossible to freeze in the written word. I suspect this is why oral traditions are so central to so many indigenous cultures. In the Asian Buddhist tradition, the most profound teachings are never written down; they are called "ear-whispered truths". They cannot be written down because the words that are used to transmit them only exist in a given moment between a teacher and a student. Once that moment is gone, the particular words vanish into eternity like incense smoke in the sky, but the transmitted truth lives on inside the student, one day to be recast into fresh words in the ear of a new student.

In any case, the more I look into the story of the railroad, the more I stumble upon fascinating textural details. And I find it fascinating because, quite frankly, I can't imagine a more distinctly American story. As strange as this may sound, I believe that the story of the Chinese in America is indeed as American as any apple pie cliché. It's a story of imperialist expansion, genocide, immigration, scientific capitalism, racism — and human survival, ingenuity, and transcendent dignity, despite it all. Isn't this precisely The American Story?

When discussing the railroad, one must always begin by recognizing the first victims of the capitalist ambitions which informed the entire project: the American Indians whose homelands were irreversibly scarred and plundered by the enclosures of European industrialism. [ Pictured: Chief Washakie and the Shoshone people, plus one Euro man in suit and hat.] In the late 1800s, as colonists under the Homestead Act (which granted European immigrants the right to arbitrarily claim 160 acres of land) and immigrant laborers imported for commercial enterprise flooded into the West, some 80% of California's native residents died of either disease or violence. And as the great buffalo herds in the Midwest were broken up, diverted, and decimated, a great wound opened up on the very face of the Earth we live on, a wound which I believe continues to haunt all of us who live here in the USA. Yes I know that theorists (most recently, Jeff Goldstein's post) dispute the validity of "collective memory"; but I don't want to get into that argument. I know how I feel, and I feel that there's an undressed wound right on the face of America, where I live, and it's called "genocide". I don't know that a Truth and Reconciliation Project could heal this wound, but I do know that pretending it's not there, pretending it doesn't hurt, is in my world inappropriate and unhealthy behavior.

One of the stand-out traits of white imperialism has been its historical ability to get people of color to do the actual dirty work. So once the plans were carefully drawn to slice up the land with fences and railroads, who actually picked up shovels and sledgehammers? Who actually scaled cliffs with explosive charges, risking life and limb to expedite capitalist commerce? As we all know, to a large extent it was the Chinese. And the notion that the Chinese seemed strange because of their clothing or hair is just so much patronizing claptrap, because a brief glance across Europe shows you just as much ethnic variation in fashion and hair stylings as you'll find in Asia. No, the Chinese were not singled out for racist abuse because of their (essentially pragmatic) hats and shirts, nor their (healthy) eating habits. They were singled out because it made sense for white industrialists to keep mainstream society's boot-heel on their necks and to keep the working class divided.

In her novel China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston brings the scene to life:

[Ah Goong] pickaxed the mountain, the dirt filling his nostrils through a cowboy bandana ... Beneath the soil they hit granite. Ah Goong struck it with his pickaxe, and it jarred his bones, chattered his teeth. He swung his sledgehammer against it and the impact rang in the dome of his skull. The mountain that was a million years old was locked against them ... he lifted his hammer high, careful that it not pull him backward and let it fall forward of its own weight against the rock. Nothing happened to that gray wall ... he hit at the same spot over and over again, the same rock. Some chips and flakes broke off. The granite looked everywhere the same. It had no softer or weaker spots ... The hammering went on day and night. When the foreman measured at the end of 24 hours pounding, the rock had given a foot.

And that's how the Chinese chipped and tunneled across the mighty Sierra Nevada mountains: one hammer hit at a time. That's how "unskilled" laborers put down the tracks that optimized transcontinental commerce in a manner that would, for better or worse, change the world.

Of course, the mobilization of a major work force delivers unintended consequences. Chinese folks got scattered across the West like seeds on a garden bed (hey I'm allowed to say stuff like that, take it easy...hehe). In Texas. In New Mexico. Up in Canada. Indeed everywhere they went, the Chinese faced racist brutality. In many small towns, white folks set fire to Chinese neighborhoods then publicly complained of the fire hazard that the Chinese posed to the town's upstanding residents. And this is exactly how white supremacy works, innit? Set them on fire then complain of the fire hazard. The story is neatly summed up in the town of Truckee:

On Sunday morning, June 18, 1876, shortly after midnight, seven armed white men silently set out from C.W. Humphrey’s Saloon and followed the old trail north along Trout Creek which led to two small cabins about one and a half miles northwest of Truckee, near today’s Tahoe Donner subdivision.

Sleeping inside the cabins was a crew of six Chinese woodcutters who had been hired by Joseph Gray to cut wood and gather firewood. Earlier that week, the workers had been warned by the same men to stop their work and leave town. The warnings may not have been understood and were not heeded.

At approximately one o’clock a.m., the gunmen surrounded one of the cabins. Two men poured coal tar onto the roof and lit it on fire, then took cover and waited. Within a minute or two, several terrified workers ran out of the cabins and began throwing water on the fire.

Without warning, the perpetrators opened up on them with their weapons. One Chinese worker, Ah Ling, was immediately shot, receiving a full charge in the left side of his abdomen. Several others were wounded before realizing they were being fired upon. The terrified woodcutters fled into the woods and hid until daybreak. Eleven shots were fired and the cabin was burned to ashes.

The same group then raided another camp, again, terrorizing another group of Chinese workers. Fortunately, nobody was killed or wounded in the second raid. [...]

In 1876 a white supremacist group, known as the Order of Caucasians or the "Caucasian League," was established. [...] Meetings were openly held in the town every Saturday evening. New members were inducted with secret initiations. The primary goal of this group was to extinguish, through any means, the Chinese population from Truckee and from California.

The plan for the raid on the cabins at Trout Creek was the result of a drunken and angry meeting that took place in the smoke filled meeting hall above the Capitol Saloon on June 18, 1876. [...]

The best lawyers in Truckee appeared before the grand jury to defend the parties. Among them was Truckee’s most respected attorney, Charles F. McGlashan. A festive atmosphere prevailed as hundreds of people from Truckee and reporters from newspapers throughout California crowded into Nevada City’s hotels. Many had to camp out on the courthouse lawn. Witnesses for the defense included John Moody, proprietor of the Truckee Hotel, and Caucasian League president, Hamlet Davis. [...]

Given the blanket of protective testimony thrown about the accused parties, the prosecution eventually abandoned the case in despair. After deliberating nine minutes, the all male jury returned a verdict of not guilty as to O’Neal, while a nolle prosequi was entered as to the arson charges in the other six cases. All the defendants were released on their own recognizance.

And finally, the kicker: the official photo of the momentous joining of the Union Pacific Company and Central Pacific Company railroads stretching toward one another from opposite shores. The Chinese had driven almost every railroad spike across the Western mountains, but when it came time to drive the last "golden spike" symbolizing the commercial connection between our two shores, no Chinese face was allowed to be seen. Only white men were photographed completing the project that "opened" the West.

Sunrunner zeroes in on the point in a recent comment: "One thing which strikes me ... is how little we focus on the economics behind the oppression of people. I'm thinking that we need to call out racism for what it really is, a polarity between fear and greed." 

...racism, a polarity between fear and greed...

I guess this is how the West was won. And how our souls got lost. And I, for one, am still searching.

Comments

[Sylvia]

See...this is why the power of histories and stories is so important. I really like this post and the others that inspired it because it counters the dominant idea that sharing racial and cultural experiences between groups would foster discord and "oppression Olympics." That assumption is rife with the idea we want to assimilate into the dominant culture, we want to accept the idea of selling our pain, and we understand that stepping on each other is the only way to heal wounds. And it's not. We can find our pride and heal our wounds by welding together what we do share and treasuring what we know. Our identities can't be for sale, regardless of how many American stories attempt to market them.

Yes I know that theorists (most recently, Jeff Goldstein's post) dispute the validity of "collective memory"; but I don't want to get into that argument. I know how I feel, and I feel that there's an undressed wound right on the face of America, where I live, and it's called "genocide". I don't know that a Truth and Reconciliation Project could heal this wound, but I do know that pretending it's not there, pretending it doesn't hurt, is in my world inappropriate and unhealthy behavior.

This part reminds me a little of thefreeslave's idea of racist pathology, maybe because of the aspects of denial it requires to maintain such a wound without dressing it.

[Fire Witch]

I am a child of the Gaelic Diaspora, and so many times when I say or write that I am white, I want to put into parentheses right behind that word "(deculturated Gael)."

However, I do not wish to diminish that we Gaels in Amerika bought into whiteness in order to climb up the social hierarchy at the expense of all POC on this continent. So the difficulty lies is in how we Gaels are to remember our true heritage and our ancestors, which the word "white" is designed to obscure, yet at the same time never lose site of the fact that we are white in terms of our unearned privileges.

Just some Exile thoughts while delurking....

Cuz Kai's cool. And I like it at his place.

[nezua limón xolografik-jonez]

beautiful, man. thank you.

there's a lot i'd comment on. but i hate getting all talky after something like that. just to say i appreciate the time and effort and being educated on that. i love the "ear-whispered truths. i have seen the same attitude toward the tradition of spoken tale in a few cultures. i like finding another place. wild.

that's some shit about the foto. no suprise, of course.

[Kai]

Sylvia, I so agree about the fundamental bogusness of the idea of "oppression Olympics" (ugh) and that sharing the stories of our respective peoples is somehow equivalent to trying to cash in our pain and our identities. Indeed I tend to think that sharing our stories allows us to identify the common threads of human struggle that underlie all our stories, which brings us together around our common humanity while simultaneously shining a light on our unique features.

Fire Witch, hey thanks for delurking! It's funny, Nez and I were just recently discussing the expression "white pride" over at his place, and we were saying how it would be one thing if people were saying "Gaelic pride" or referring to some such actual ethnic heritage (which I believe is entirely legitimate and even fascinating to history-digging persons of color such as myself...I simply must visit Ireland!), but the expression "white" obviously masks any true ethnic identity behind the imperialist projects of white male supremacy from which the concept of whiteness emerges. Indeed I think it's a shame to so many white folks (here in America, anyway) either deny or are simply disconnected from their own heritage, but then whiteness has never really been about finding roots and becoming whole, huh? So I do think it's tricky for someone like you, who wishes to celebrate your actual heritage while acknowledging and disavowing white supremacy. I'll be eagerly watching just how you accomplish this feat over at your place. ;-)

Nez, thanks man, glad you enjoyed the stroll through history. Yeah that photo is classic, innit? The contrast between the photos of the humble men building the tracks and that self-congratulatory lot celebrating the track's completion is pretty damn stark, and just says it all.

[Nanette]

This is all so fascinating, Kai. I'm glad you've taken the time to pull all this together (and the other post too, bringing up the questions about the interaction between the various cultures). I hope you continue with this as time and inclination move you.

I may not comment much but I'm having a grand time reading everything here (and at Donna's and Nezua's, P6's, Man Eegees, mbw's, little light's and so on).

It's like a huge mosaic, which is just how it should be. We are none of us, in this country at least, only part of one thing and only affected by things that have direct impact on us, no matter who we are.

There is, of course, lots that more that you've written here that I could comment on, but "ditto" works ;).

Something did strike me tho:

In the Asian Buddhist tradition, the most profound teachings are never written down; they are called "ear-whispered truths". They cannot be written down because the words that are used to transmit them only exist in a given moment between a teacher and a student. Once that moment is gone, the particular words vanish into eternity like incense smoke in the sky, but the transmitted truth lives on inside the student, one day to be recast into fresh words in the ear of a new student.

I have no idea if it's at all the same concept, but this reminded me of a show I saw one time on um.. probably PBS or the like. It was some rarely filmed ceremony or ritual type thing (may have been Buddhist, am not sure) where they spent hours making this gorgeous sand picture, very intricate and detailed and just beautiful... and then when they were done, they let the wind blow it all away. I think they may have even helped the wind out, can't remember.I do remember thinking "OMG, how could they do that!?" It just seemed like such a tragedy and waste that so beautiful a thing was gone in just moments.

I think there was an explanation of sorts, similar to the one above, where whatever was meant to be grasped from the sand paintings was meant to be gotten right then, and would never come around again.

I sort of understood that, and then later came across other cultures where they did basically the same thing, and for some of the same reasons (I know some Native American ones, but others that I can't remember, quite). Also, there are artists that paint in sand and then erase, but not as part of a learning ritual type thing, but for whatever personal reasons.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting - and I think I could somehow connect it to our national wound, but am not sure at the moment just quite how.

[Professor Zero]

"...racism, a polarity between fear and greed..."

Yes. And great post! Also:

"...pretending it's not there, pretending it doesn't hurt..."

Pretending it's not there is what those in charge would like to have done: pretending like that takes energy and limits horizons, and so helps to maintain the status quo (or worsen it).

[Fire Witch]

Right on, Kai. Gaelic pride!

Now, if you're wanting to go to Ireland, I highly recommend as a good primer into the history and culture of that people, a DVD your local library will likely have called "In Search of Ancient Ireland." Interloan it if they don't.

The photography is phenomenal, and I was heartened by the historians' willingness to face the effects of catastrophic weather/atmospheric changes on Irish society as evidenced by stunted oaks recovered from Ireland's numerous bogs. Something earth-shattering happened to the Irish at exactly the same time that the Shan dynasty in China collapsed and the Greek dark ages began. What could it have been?

Readers of Immanuel Velikovsky's Earth in Upheaval and Worlds In Collision (by way of Vine Deloria's God is Red) will not be surprised at these natural events that may well be the key to our generational and inter-national traumas.

I'm still very much in the researching and learning stage of all that is Gaelic heritage, so it might be a while before I can write something coherent for posting.

But I am greatly encouraged by your interest, Kai.

Cheers.

[Kai]

Nanette, it sounds like you saw the creation and destruction of a Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala, which is indeed an amazing thing to behold. (Actually from what I understand certain American Indians have quite similar traditions of using colored sand to create ephemeral occult representations.) I've been lucky enough to personally witness the process; it's a meditative cultural exercise that takes a team of a half-dozen or a dozen highly skilled monks about 2 or 3 weeks. The monks are required to maintain the most pristine states of attention throughout the sacred act. The artwork itself is unbelievably precise, loaded with hyper-technical spiritual symbolism, and of course gorgeous to the eye. And once the center of the mandala is completed, it is destroyed. The patterns in the sand are ritually disrupted via specific paths, accompanied with chanting and music and offerings, then the sand is neatly swept up into containers, then solemnly walked out to the nearest body of moving water and dispersed. I've found that Westerners are uniformly shocked and even dismayed at the destruction of the mandala, but for me that's the most powerful and transcendent part of the whole thing. I mean, getting conceived and born is cool, but living-dying is the real ride. I guess the attitude being expressed is that every work of art is transient, whether it's sand, an oil painting, a marble statue, Mount Rushmore, or even the planet Earth and the Milky Way; but the focus is on that from which all these things emerge, not that which emerges. All external things are destroyed, but that from which we emerge, the energy which illuminates the pictures in our eyes, is eternal. Well, something like that. Don't quote me or anything. ;-)

Fire Witch, Gaelic pride rocks...as long as it's not those crooning "Celtic Women" on PBS lately! Okay I probably just offended someone, sorry, that stuff just doesn't work for me, and I tend to have a broad palate for music and art and culture. Anyway, thank you for pointing me toward some backgrounders before I make the trip to Ireland (sometime in the next coupla years, hopefully). Also, I didn't realize the correspondence between the collapse of Gaelic and Shang civilizations, that's kinda interesting -- and a long way back, sister! Wow we're talking like 3,000 years ago. Anyway, I just realized (duh) that it might be appropriate to bring up the Irish when discussing the railroads, because the Irish also played a big role alongside the Chinese...or what do you think? It's interesting (and I'm absolutely not talking racial trash here) but the Chinese were known to lay down twice as much track in half the time for half the money as the Irish or anyone else, and I think the reasons for this were probably manifold; but most importantly, I suspect that the Irish and others were buying into white privilege, so why work harder than you had to keep the job? I mean, this was backbreaking work, who wouldn't take it a bit easier if you could get away with it? Plus, I also suspect that the good eating habits of the Chinese helped (a very Chinese thought, I know, I'm partial to Chinese eating habits). I don't think these things suggest any racial attributes, though, I think they suggest a continuous culture several thousand years old that has figured out a thing or two and managed to pass it along. Anyway I'm definitely meandering now, but I should add that I wasn't trying to mount any external expectations that you'd cover Gaelic history on your blog -- though of course if you choose to do so, I'll be reading. ;-)

[Professor Zero]

Friday Virtual Museum: History of Chinese in California:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/5views/5views3c.htm

I am fascinated by the many fishing and shrimping camps there were, and how they had to pay extra taxes, etc., etc., because of being Chinese. Now, though, some are museums, and have reproductions of the actual boats, which include junks. Some of the original ones were fishing boats sailed all the way across the Pacific.

[Kai]

Thanks, Prof! I'll incorporate this link in my next post on the topic... :-D

[Fire Witch]

Now as far as I have heard, the Irish died by the tens of thousands digging the Erie canal (malaria ya know), as well as much of New Orleans, but there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that we/they absolutely bought into white privilege like it was going outta style every chance we got.

It's one of the reasons why I have come down so hard on reporter and illegal Irish immigrant Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News for his despicable participation in the witchhunt of Cherokee scholar Ward Churchill.

Quick historical note: The Gaels also include the so-called Scots, but one must remember that "Scotti" is the Roman word for the Irish, so when one says "Scotland" you are really saying Land of the Irish. The Irish colonized the land of the Picts (who may or may not have been Celtic peoples themselves), making the Irish invaders or possibly allies in the north of Roman Britain. Hadrian's Wall is the northernmost point in England where the Celts stopped the advancing Roman imperialists. The Gauls, whom Julius Caesar slaughtered to the tune of about a million in what is now France (and then wrote a book about it) are also part of the Celtic family of Nations. We all share a sad history of genocide at the hands of imperialists. And we all share an ugly hand in the genocide of other indigenous people.

There is an excellent book called "How the Irish Became White" that lays out the white-supremacist steps taken by the different waves of Gaels invading Turtle Island. Andrew Jackson, that hideous killer of Indians, had parents who were from Ulster, in the North of Ireland. And we all know John Kennedy was no friend of the indigenous people of Vietnam.

This is what happens when a people forget who they are and from whence they have come. Many starving Gaels escaping both the Highland Clearances of Scotland and the Great Hunger of Ireland chose to take the drug of white supremacy rather than face the fact that they had arrived as a boat people in a land every bit as imperialist as the one they had just escaped.

Yes, ancient Ireland was a very long time ago. But the past is prologue. The Irish astronomical observatories like Tara and Newgrange predate by 1000 years the pyramids of Egypt. An 839 year old colonization by the British demands we forget this antiquity, as if we never had a coherent society capable of organizing itself for its own benefit rather than that of the colonizers. Of particular interest to me is that archaelogists say the Irish were not a warlike people until some natural catastrophe ended the Bronze Age and began the Iron.

But you want hear a peep about any of that from Musak-y, New Age warblers and their dubious, pan-Celtic romanticism!

Yuck!

Stick with the Chieftains and Sinead O'Connor, I say.

BTW. Back over at my place I've made Superbowl predictions....