Roundup — "I am the Professor of my suffering"

First off, thanks to the good folks who contributed such high-quality comments to the thread on "The Colored Lens". Of particular relevance to one specific line of inquiry I proposed, atlasien points us to a travel piece by Joe Cummings entitled "Sweet & Sour Times on the Border", which touches upon a fascinating fragment of Chinese Mexican history as embodied in the town of Mexicali:

Less than 500 metres south of the U.S. border, in front of a ochre-stuccoed shopfront signed 'Café Nueva Asia', a technicolor banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe hangs side by side with a red paper lamp bearing Chinese characters. Although nearly three months have elapsed between the Feast Day of Guadalupe and Chinese New Year, here in Mexicali--capital of Baja California Norte, Mexico--the Chinese Mexican family who own the restaurant invoke all the heavenly powers to bring more business into their tiny café. Four elderly Chinese men, two of whom sport the stiff straw cowboy hat common to northern Mexico, kibitz over hamburgers and green tea, speaking a mixture of Cantonese and Spanish. Along with burgers and chow mein, the red-bordered wall menu offers shark-fin tacos--perhaps the ultimate California surfer's revenge. [...]

The first Chinese to arrive in the area at the turn of the century signed on as labourers for the Colorado River Land Company, an American enterprise which designed and built an extensive irrigation system in the fertile Valle de Mexicali. Some immigrants came overland from America, often fleeing officially sanctioned anti-Chinese policies in the U.S., while others sailed directly from China via the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. As in California, thousands of Chinese coolies were lured to the area by the promise of high wages that never materialised. [...]

Many of the Chinese labourers who survived the building of the irrigation system stayed on after its completion, congregating in an area of Mexicali today known as Chinesca ('Chinatown'). Especially during the U.S. Prohibition years, when Americans flocked to Mexican border towns to partake of the alcoholic beverages outlawed at home, Chinese labourers and farmers moved into the city and spent their hard-earned savings to open bars, restaurants, and hotels. Chinesca eventually housed virtually all of the city's casinos and bars, and an underground tunnel system connected bordellos and opium dens with Mexicali's counterpart city on the U.S. side, Calexico. Bootleggers also used this route to supply the U.S. with booze purchased in Mexico. Many, but by no means all, of the Prohibition-era businesses were operated by chinos

Ah yes, the ubiquitousness of Chinese coolies, i.e. unskilled brown/yellow laborers, an expression which makes me wonder, How do "unskilled" people construct irrigation systems in the desert and railroads across high mountain passes which are widely regarded as amazing feats of engineering? Plus, I thought Chinese men were weak and effete? Why would they be the ones doing the backbreaking work in the baking sun and freezing snow?

No matter, China Matters has recently published a brilliant essay entitled "The Coolie Quagmire: Flogging, Sodomy, and Imperial Overreach on the Rand". Here's an extensive excerpt, but quite frankly the entire piece is a must-read for all anti-racists, and China Hand deserves a lot of credit for his ongoing stream of eye-opening research and writing:

The turn of the 20th century was a heady time to be a lord of international finance and industry, as Herbert Hoover was.

Developments in finance, technology, organization, and transportation meant that millions of dollars, mountains of resources, and thousands of men could be set in motion across the face of the earth in the service of an idea.

Even a bad idea.

Like the program that exported 50,000 coolie laborers, most of them under the aegis of the China Engineering and Mining Corporation--which, with Herbert Hoover’s connivance, had previously wrested the immense Kaiping colliery from imperial Chinese control--to South Africa beginning in 1904.

The basic concept was simple enough: to put a cap on the wage demands of local mine workers by importing low-cost labor from abroad. [...]

Importing Chinese labor into South Africa’s volatile, multi-racial society, in which Great Britain was seeking to institutionalize its dominance over the recently-defeated Boers and the black population, presented significant risks and challenges.

In a fascinating sidebar, a fact-finding mission was dispatched to California to try to learn from and avoid the mistakes and conflicts that had bedeviled U.S. exploitation of Oriental labor. [...]

A great deal of ingenuity was expended in order to make the program a state-of-the-art exercise in wage busting.

First, as we have seen, the labor force would have to be non-white, so it would be bereft of the legal rights and expectations that had roiled the Australian gold fields when Italian laborers had been introduced.

Secondly, the privileges, responsibilities, and opportunities of the labor force would be defined strictly and completely by the terms of its labor contract with the mine owners.

Workers would be indentured: brought to South Africa for three year contracts, housed in work camps, and forbidden to reside locally or work in other occupations, or even leave the camps without prior written permission.

Third, the expense of importing and housing workers brought from afar would be mitigated by scientific management. The workers would bring no distracting and expensive family members with them and would be housed in efficient, high density residential facilities whose resemblance to a sinister technological innovation of the Boer War—the concentration camp--was perhaps not coincidental.

Staying in South Africa but jumping ahead to the present-day, I've just discovered squattercity via Black Looks, where you can listen in awe to the ringing sound of righteousness emanating from the words of M'du Hlongwa, who proclaims, "I am the Professor of my own suffering":

The politicians have shown that they are not the answer to our suffering. The poor are just made the ladders of the politicians. The politician is an animal that hibernates. They always come out in the election season to make empty promises and then they disappear. But we know that lies are for the time being but truth is for life. These guys get into power by lying to us and then they make money. They don't work for the people who put them up there. In fact our suffering ends up working for them. Their power comes because they say that they will speak for us. That is why in Abahlali we started to say 'Speak to us and not for us' and why we vote in our own elections for people who will live and work with us in our communities and without any hopes for making our suffering into a nice job.

We know that our country is rich. We know that it is the suffering of the poor that makes it rich. We know how we suffer and we know why we suffer. But in Abahlali we have found that even though we are a democratic organisation that gets its power from the trust of our members and have never hurt one person the government and even some NGOs call us criminal when we speak for ourselves. We are supposed to suffer silently so that some rich people can get rich from our work and others can get rich having conferences about having more conferences about our suffering. But the police never come to these conferences. These conferences are just empty talking. When we have big meetings where we live the police are even in the sky in their helicopters. These conferences demand our support but they never support our struggles. We are always on our own when the fires come or when the police come or when the City comes to evict us.

I want to say clearly that I am a Professor of my suffering. We are all Professors of our suffering. But in this South Africa the poor must always be invisible. We must be invisible where we live and where we work. We must even be invisible when people are getting paid to talk about us in government or in NGOs! Everything is done in our name. We are even told that the 2010 World Cup is for us when we can't afford tickets and will even be lucky to watch it on television. The money for stadiums should go for houses and water and electricity and schools and clinics. Even now shacks are being destroyed and street traders are being sorely abused by the METRO and SAPS police to make us invisible when the visitors come. This World Cup is destroying our lives. I call 2010 'The year of the curse'. South Africa is sinking. It will only be rescued if the poor take their place in the country.

Now it might seem odd for an Asian American to be excerpting a South African squatter's advocate, but one of the recurring themes here at Zuky is the intersection of diverse forms of oppression. As commenters such as Dead Inside, Kevin, Yolanda, Nezua, and Donna articulated in the recent thread, our struggles are united. Nanette summed up it with three words from Dr. King: "Justice is indivisible."

This truth was made especially apparent to me in recent months after I wrote my essay on "The Greatest Cliché" and found that the perspective resonated with diverse communities, not only people of color but also feminists and gay activists. And this is a good thing, because Rachel points us to a recent study suggesting that when diverse communities work together, they end up making more money. (Okay maybe it's not quite that simple...) ;-D

To wrap up, I'll simply link you to three noteworthy posts: Skeptical Brotha points out that the Obama phenomenon emerged not from the Black grassroots, but from the white power structure. XicanoPwr follows up on the imprisonment of immigrants. And Power and Politics responds to a New York Times piece about Asian Americans "crowding" top schools.

Peace.

UPDATE (2007-01-19 22:03EST): While assembling this roundup, I somehow neglected to link to Kevin's response at SlantTruth to Jill's post at Feministe, which in turn is a response to Jeff Goldstein's theoretical stroll at protein wisdom.

While I'm at it, I might as well point out Carmen's three part series counting down the Top Ten Racialicious pop culture trends for 2006.

Finally, I thought I'd add one last semi-awkward note: it's no secret that I've had serious (and I mean serious) disagreements with the folks at Firedoglake, but I was still upset by the news that Jane Hamsher has been diagnosed with breast cancer for the third time and has just undergone surgery. I wish Jane a speedy recovery.

Comments

[Professor Zero]

Great post and I love the title - and thanks for all the links!!!

[Kai]

Hehe, you just have a thing for the word "Professor", don't you! ;-D Thanks, Prof Zero, glad you like it.

[Sylvia]

Thanks for linking to that professor article; it's lovely.

If only my classes taught from the blogosphere... :-p

[XP]

Chinese coolies, i.e. unskilled brown/yellow laborers...How do "unskilled" people construct irrigation systems in the desert and railroads across high mountain passes which are widely regarded as amazing feats of engineering?

It is interesting how Latinos and Asians were once considered "unskilled" and now one group is considered the "model" minority and the other group is considered the "hardest workers they ever seen." I remember in the 90s when I was living in CA, the two groups of people they wanted out of the state where once again Latinos and Asian Americans. One was accused of taking away all the scholarships and were taking over all the colleges; and the other group were taking away all the jobs.

Sadly, we are not told about this in our history books, nor how when US invaded Mexico for the rest of the US Southwest, all the displaced Mexicans were forced to work side-by-side with the Chinese to build the railroads. It was not until the 1890s when Latinos were at least being part of the US.

Because we are not told this, we continue to work separately in our struggle.

[superfake]

this reportage speak abuot a story totally unknow in italy!
i think that is important for all to know something very far of us.....
i believe that in europe we had past the same story without having the sensation, now we are being a great federal continent without a common background!
the immigration build a lot of community like enclaves that are too much separeted from the original people.
the risk is that people can develop common projects, and religion, race and origin will origin discrimination....

your blog is very interesting slowly i'm reading it!

ciao ciao paolo

[Kevin]

Wow. Great roundup Kai. Every time I start thinking about giving up on blogs I read a post like this that reminds me of and introduces me to so many great and inspiring writers out there.

[MB Williams]

Kai, it's posts like this which make me excited to run the "Most Deserving" and "Best New" categories, for I believe you'll do well. Hard for anyone not to see what a very deserving site you run.

[Kai]

Sylvia, hehe I suppose it would depend on which blogs were being used as teaching material...and actually, I'm assuming that there must be some push in academia to start using this medium as a teaching tool. If I were a teacher I'd be psyched to use a blog for posting assignments, updates, materials, discussions, linking to blogs in related fields, etc...

XP, it's true, oftentimes our histories get buried, wedges are driven between our communities, we don't know the stories of our own people. Fortunately there are also progressives out there doing what they can to re-assert these hidden histories.

superfake, hehe I have no idea how much of what I write you comprehend, I do sometimes use arcane language that even some native English speakers might have to look up, but anyway I'm glad you're enjoying yourself here and learning a thing or two.

Kevin and MB, thanks... and isn't it just a delightful thing when you stumble upon blogospheric gems like China Matters and squattercity?

Cheers.

[Sunrunner]

This is a great round up Kai (as always!).

One thing which strikes me from reading through this and other similar writings 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.

I would love to live in a world in which the security/pleasure/enjoyment I derive from it is not based upon the suffering of my fellow people.

[Kai]

Sunrunner, I can't agree with you more. I know there are lots of theories about racism, but call me a simple guy, I think it's ultimately about hustling money. No really. I think the entire phenomenon of white racism is an economic ploy, period.