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How White America Tried to Destroy Chinese Restaurants · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm Ben, I'm no,
0:28
Speaker 1: and we are as always joined with our super producer
0:31
Speaker 1: Alex Williams. Have we introduced Alex to the Ridiculous History
0:34
Speaker 1: crowd yet? Ah? Yes, everyone, Alex Alex. Everyone. He doesn't
0:39
Speaker 1: really talk. He only talks in our ears and dead
0:42
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes we get him to turn up
0:43
Speaker 1: the high hats and we assure you he's very much real.
0:47
Speaker 1: It's very much super. Now he's there, we're looking at him,
0:49
Speaker 1: and he is a handsome toothsome young man. Um. Have
0:52
Speaker 1: you seen the new Blade Runner movie? At been? I
0:55
Speaker 1: have not seen the New Blade Runner yet. No. I
0:57
Speaker 1: saw it last night at like ten o'clock. And I
1:00
Speaker 1: do really badly with falling asleep at late movies. And
1:03
Speaker 1: it's quite long, but I will tell you that it
1:06
Speaker 1: moved along at such a It's a very languid movie,
1:09
Speaker 1: but it actually has a pretty incredible clip of action
1:12
Speaker 1: and activity that kind of kept me awake and alert
1:15
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed every second of it. And it's a
1:18
Speaker 1: it's somewhat of a slow bird, right if I'm having
1:22
Speaker 1: a hard time expression because it is a slow burn
1:24
Speaker 1: and it's a very languid kind of drone e movie.
1:26
Speaker 1: It's got this amazing score that very much matches what
1:31
Speaker 1: Van Gellis did on the original one, but this time
1:33
Speaker 1: they've got Hans Zimmer doing it. He's doing his very
1:35
Speaker 1: best Vangellis impersonation and it's great. But it's like, you know,
1:39
Speaker 1: it's the kind of movie that used to maybe would
1:41
Speaker 1: have put me to sleep watching it at ten o'clock
1:43
Speaker 1: and it is three hours long. But I'm just I
1:45
Speaker 1: think that says a lot. I don't want to give
1:46
Speaker 1: anything away. Everyone should see it. It's really cool. This
1:49
Speaker 1: has like literally nothing to do with what we're talking
1:51
Speaker 1: about today. It kind of does, does it, yes, Because
1:54
Speaker 1: because we're we're currently talking about the seventeen the new
1:59
Speaker 1: Blea Runner film. In the previous Blade Runner film, one
2:04
Speaker 1: of my favorite things about it watching watching it as
2:07
Speaker 1: a wee Tyke was decort right the protagonists he is.
2:14
Speaker 1: It seems like there are scenes where he is walking
2:16
Speaker 1: by restaurants and stuff. Man, I totally just pulled this
2:20
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, but it absolutely does connect because it
2:22
Speaker 1: was the future depicted in the Blade Runner movies and
2:26
Speaker 1: in this new one too. There's a definite Chinese influence.
2:30
Speaker 1: See where I'm going, and you see where you're going,
2:31
Speaker 1: and there are you know, restaurants on every corner. A
2:34
Speaker 1: lot of the folks that make the manufacturer the bootleg
2:38
Speaker 1: um replicant animals and different things like that, they're they're
2:42
Speaker 1: from China, and everyone kind of also speaks Chinese. Yeah,
2:46
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a second language. It's very important.
2:48
Speaker 1: There's this implied subtext that whether economically or culturally, the
2:55
Speaker 1: Chinese culture is making these in roads right on place
3:00
Speaker 1: is where it formerly would never have existed. And in
3:03
Speaker 1: the universe of at least the original Blade Runner, this
3:08
Speaker 1: is a given. This is after the fact, after the
3:11
Speaker 1: story begins. This is already happened. And what's strange about it,
3:16
Speaker 1: you know, there is always the argument that science fiction
3:18
Speaker 1: is like prescient, right, it's predictive. In this case, what's
3:22
Speaker 1: fascinating is that in the past we have to wonder
3:27
Speaker 1: what the directors are drawing from, because in the real
3:29
Speaker 1: life past and genuine American history, there was a time
3:33
Speaker 1: where people were very threatened by this notion. Yeah, it's
3:39
Speaker 1: kind of another really awful, embarrassing thing that we as
3:44
Speaker 1: a country did. It's it's pretty awful. Um, this is
3:50
Speaker 1: kind of a bit of a bummer of a topic,
3:52
Speaker 1: but it's really fascinating and for obvious reasons, completely ridiculous.
3:57
Speaker 1: But we're gonna be as sensitive as humanly possible about this.
3:59
Speaker 1: But there are some kind of upsetting racial themes that
4:02
Speaker 1: we're going to get into in talking about America's war
4:07
Speaker 1: on Chinese restaurants in the early nineteen hundreds. Now, I know,
4:12
Speaker 1: I know, I know how this sounds. We know how
4:14
Speaker 1: this sounds when you're hearing it a war on what.
4:17
Speaker 1: And of course it's not as if America as a
4:19
Speaker 1: stranger to waging war on various things, various things that
4:25
Speaker 1: aren't nations, right. Uh. And it's kind of hard to
4:28
Speaker 1: believe today because we know that there are over forty
4:32
Speaker 1: one thousand Chinese restaurants in the US. This is an institution.
4:39
Speaker 1: You know, we always think of think of about how
4:42
Speaker 1: ubiquity is some fast food places might be, but Chinese
4:47
Speaker 1: restaurants are taking the cake. I believe there are about
4:49
Speaker 1: three times as many Chinese restaurants as the number of
4:52
Speaker 1: McDonald's and General so Is Chicken. I've always been concerned
4:57
Speaker 1: about my pronunciation of that as a General so Yeah, Yeah,
4:59
Speaker 1: like yes that I'm gonna go with general. So it's
5:02
Speaker 1: uh one of the most ordered dishes online via grub
5:07
Speaker 1: hub um in the nation. So it's like one of
5:11
Speaker 1: the most popular takeout foods that we have. Um. So
5:14
Speaker 1: let's just set the scene a little bit, the creepy
5:17
Speaker 1: racist scene, if you will. In the early to mid
5:21
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, the um white establishment, which was made up
5:25
Speaker 1: of like local governments and labor unions, and boy boy,
5:29
Speaker 1: were the labor unions a big part of this problem,
5:32
Speaker 1: which we'll get into you later, among other institutions in
5:34
Speaker 1: the US, basically put out and supported these Jim Crow
5:40
Speaker 1: laws and other regulations that were incredibly prohibitive specifically to
5:47
Speaker 1: people of Asian descent. Right. And based on these regulations
5:52
Speaker 1: and the underlying and open, we should say this, very
5:56
Speaker 1: open racist ideology, this establishment waged a campaign trying to
6:02
Speaker 1: drive the Chinese restaurants of the time out of business.
6:07
Speaker 1: And a lot of the stuff that we're a lot
6:10
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff we're taking as inspiration in
6:12
Speaker 1: this episode comes from a fantastic study written by Gabriel J.
6:18
Speaker 1: Chin and John Ormand called the War against Chinese Restaurants. Yeah,
6:24
Speaker 1: the paper goes into every possible angle of this and
6:28
Speaker 1: it's it's more than we could hope to cover in
6:31
Speaker 1: a in a thirty minute podcast, but um, it's it's
6:34
Speaker 1: it's such an interesting microcosm for the history of racism
6:38
Speaker 1: in America too, because it comes at it from all sides. Basically,
6:42
Speaker 1: you have, you know, the idea of targeting a specific
6:45
Speaker 1: race with mistreatment and trying to exclude them from earning
6:49
Speaker 1: a living wage and being successful entrepreneurs in this country,
6:54
Speaker 1: to you know, the boycotts and all of the things
6:56
Speaker 1: that go along with that, and protests, to the whole
6:59
Speaker 1: idea of the Chinese man being painted and portrayed as
7:06
Speaker 1: some sort of insidious threat that would potentially woo unsuspecting
7:11
Speaker 1: white women into their you know, underground opium layers, and
7:17
Speaker 1: you know, just just the most awful, stereotypical kinds of
7:20
Speaker 1: things you could think of. Uh, this paper really dissects
7:24
Speaker 1: all of that and gets to the heart of what's
7:26
Speaker 1: going on here. Yeah, and the heart of what's going
7:29
Speaker 1: on is unfortunately all too familiar because it obeys some
7:34
Speaker 1: of the same patterns we have seen in history before.
7:38
Speaker 1: And then the strangest and craziest thing about it is.
7:41
Speaker 1: The question did America wage war on Chinese restaurants sounds ridiculous,
7:48
Speaker 1: and the answer is yes, absolutely and no. You mentioned
7:52
Speaker 1: some some of the prongs of their argument here and
7:56
Speaker 1: there there two sides, right, there's the econom um excite,
8:00
Speaker 1: as South Park characters would say, they're taking our gerbs, right, Yeah,
8:05
Speaker 1: I mean there was you know, a lot of Chinese
8:07
Speaker 1: immigration happened in the early eighteen hundreds as a result
8:11
Speaker 1: of their willingness to work for less money. And you know,
8:16
Speaker 1: we built the Transcontinal Railroad and that was a huge
8:19
Speaker 1: part of that labor force. And you know, of course,
8:21
Speaker 1: you leave your home and you come to the land
8:24
Speaker 1: of opportunity and the hopes of making a better life
8:27
Speaker 1: for yourself, and then surprise, you're treated like utter garbage
8:31
Speaker 1: and paid nothing and given no protections because the unions
8:35
Speaker 1: literally would not allow folks of Chinese descent to be
8:41
Speaker 1: a member, right exactly. And you know, labor unions are
8:46
Speaker 1: a complex thing in US history, so we're not demigrating
8:51
Speaker 1: the idea of labor unions. Overall. This is not capital
8:54
Speaker 1: l capital you labor unions the concept. This is about
8:58
Speaker 1: the provable, disputable actions of labor unions in this time,
9:04
Speaker 1: because you see, they thought that these restaurants for for
9:08
Speaker 1: people who are able to literally through backbreaking work probably
9:13
Speaker 1: no small amount of luck and endless determination. People who
9:17
Speaker 1: started their own restaurants were being targeted because they were
9:19
Speaker 1: seeing this competition for American restaurants and that they were
9:24
Speaker 1: taking away jobs, right, good American jobs in this case
9:29
Speaker 1: pretty much white people restaurant jobs. And the idea of
9:35
Speaker 1: this threat was to them a to these labor unions.
9:40
Speaker 1: It was not so much an act of aggression as
9:43
Speaker 1: it was some sort of act of defense or survivalism. No,
9:48
Speaker 1: you've already already mentioned the fear that these these strange
9:54
Speaker 1: men would capture the white women and involved them in
9:59
Speaker 1: slavery essentially for opium. And this also, I think shows
10:03
Speaker 1: how how much of a dearth of education there was
10:07
Speaker 1: regarding the history of the West China and opium, because
10:11
Speaker 1: we we haven't talked about on this show, but in
10:13
Speaker 1: the Opium Wars, one of the main reasons they occurred
10:17
Speaker 1: is because the Chinese government said, please stop forcing opium
10:23
Speaker 1: on our people when it was really happening. So it's
10:25
Speaker 1: an interesting and heartbreaking switcheroo. As as you said, this
10:32
Speaker 1: immigration had been in play since the eighteen fifties, and
10:38
Speaker 1: as these as people who came over from China began
10:43
Speaker 1: to prosper and save money, they started opening their own businesses.
10:46
Speaker 1: American Dream right, textbook American Dream, so to quote from
10:53
Speaker 1: um an email interview conducted with the author of that paper,
10:57
Speaker 1: Gabriel Jack Chenum non Chinese American cooks and waiters and
11:02
Speaker 1: restaurant owners really wanted the Chinese restaurants gone. But what
11:06
Speaker 1: got the labor movement as a whole interested was restricting
11:09
Speaker 1: immigration in general and keeping Asians out of the workforce entirely. Yeah. Absolutely.
11:17
Speaker 1: And this this is a strange case because it begins
11:21
Speaker 1: to enter legislation. This fearmongering and this prejudice led to
11:27
Speaker 1: Congress passing laws that explicitly stopped, blocked, halted, cut off
11:32
Speaker 1: Chinese immigration, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen
11:37
Speaker 1: eighty two. And the thing is, when the earliest Chinese
11:41
Speaker 1: restaurants started in the US, they were not billing themselves
11:46
Speaker 1: as quote unquote Chinese restaurants. The restauranteurs were assimilating. They
11:52
Speaker 1: were including American food, you know, like grilled steak of
11:55
Speaker 1: roast chicken, you know, whatever is around too. I mean,
11:58
Speaker 1: we also think about supply chains. In that time, they
12:02
Speaker 1: were probably making foods that were easily made from surrounding areas,
12:07
Speaker 1: right and agricultural resources. But this didn't stop the unions
12:11
Speaker 1: from going after Chinese restaurants, and they use different tactics
12:16
Speaker 1: to do this. In some communities, the white union members
12:21
Speaker 1: would do what is almost a mafioso tactic. They would
12:25
Speaker 1: go into the restaurant and they would say, well, you know,
12:28
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you just a warning here, be about
12:32
Speaker 1: time to leave town. Wednesday is a good trip forever. Yeah,
12:37
Speaker 1: I mean in that paper, there's a whole section on
12:40
Speaker 1: some of these attempts to literally run these folks out
12:43
Speaker 1: of town like on a rail. Yes, and this was
12:46
Speaker 1: not the only arrow in the quiver of these labor unions.
12:50
Speaker 1: They also organized boycotts, and a boycott would be you've
12:56
Speaker 1: seen these in the modern day. Boycott in this instance
12:59
Speaker 1: would be something like a group of people getting together
13:02
Speaker 1: to maybe protests outside of a restaurant, to pass out
13:06
Speaker 1: handbills talking about this this menace and to exhort friends, neighbors,
13:12
Speaker 1: and loved ones not to go to this restaurant to
13:16
Speaker 1: make it feel that it is somehow a civic responsibility
13:19
Speaker 1: not to support this establishment. And when you bring it
13:22
Speaker 1: back to the labor unions, it becomes basically like a
13:24
Speaker 1: national boycott because they made a huge deal about not
13:30
Speaker 1: patronizing any businesses that weren't connected to the labor unions,
13:35
Speaker 1: and they would not allow people of Asian descent um,
13:39
Speaker 1: whether they are you know, even children of immigrants, to
13:43
Speaker 1: join the unions um. Therefore, they were essentially telling all
13:46
Speaker 1: of their members to have nothing to do with any
13:50
Speaker 1: business that had any connection with you know, these these people. Yes,
13:54
Speaker 1: so let's let's think about this in the human perspective.
13:57
Speaker 1: I love that you point this out. So even if
14:00
Speaker 1: you were born in the US, maybe your parents immigrated
14:04
Speaker 1: and you were born in California, that law would still
14:07
Speaker 1: apply to you. It's something more. It's the layer of
14:11
Speaker 1: race instead of just the layer of citizenship. And let's
14:15
Speaker 1: imagine for a second the other side of the argument.
14:18
Speaker 1: Let's say that you are a labor union member and
14:23
Speaker 1: you don't have a problem with these other restaurants. Heck,
14:26
Speaker 1: once a week you go out for family dinner at
14:29
Speaker 1: your favorite place and you order chop suey, which is
14:32
Speaker 1: a whole different thing, right, but because you're in the Union,
14:37
Speaker 1: you can. It's you're not only told not to do it,
14:40
Speaker 1: but there will be consequences if you do, uh, go
14:43
Speaker 1: to this restaurant. Yeah, And speaking of chop suey, that
14:47
Speaker 1: was actually a kind of an Americanized Asian dish that became,
14:53
Speaker 1: you know, a centerpiece for um. These restaurants that were
14:56
Speaker 1: popping up all over the place, especially in California. They
14:58
Speaker 1: are called chop suey house is And it was a
15:01
Speaker 1: dish that was like a stir fried mix of meat
15:03
Speaker 1: and vegetables and eggs over noodles. And I was looking
15:06
Speaker 1: it up and apparently the origin of the fridly terms
15:09
Speaker 1: chop suey comes from the idea of reusing leftovers, so
15:13
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, whatever you have left in
15:15
Speaker 1: the frid So it's not a specific set of ingredients,
15:18
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like whatever's around. Um. But they
15:20
Speaker 1: were really popular, and these restaurants were popping up all
15:23
Speaker 1: over the place, and you know, the they were the
15:26
Speaker 1: target of all kinds of racist animosity, um wherever they
15:30
Speaker 1: were found, even though they were certainly also pretty popular, right,
15:34
Speaker 1: people were people were obviously building restaurants to meet demand. Right.
15:41
Speaker 1: If people didn't like this food, then these would these
15:45
Speaker 1: restaurants wouldn't exist. That's just how this business would work.
15:49
Speaker 1: When the boycotts didn't work, though, and when the threats
15:53
Speaker 1: didn't work both to let's remember the people who owned
15:56
Speaker 1: the restaurants and the people who already existed in labor unions.
16:00
Speaker 1: There was another step, and a very serious step. This
16:04
Speaker 1: is where a story takes an even darker turn. There
16:07
Speaker 1: was a missionary named el Ci Siegel and she was
16:11
Speaker 1: found murdered in nineteen o nine in a room above
16:14
Speaker 1: a Chinese restaurant in New York City. And this, as
16:19
Speaker 1: Marcavelli in cold and I would say evil as it sounds,
16:25
Speaker 1: was the opportunity that these anti immigration forces have been
16:28
Speaker 1: waiting for. Yeah, this became a really huge story, not
16:33
Speaker 1: just in New York but all across the country. And
16:36
Speaker 1: there's a really great article on the site of the
16:39
Speaker 1: Tenement Museum, and it's got some great clips of the headlines.
16:43
Speaker 1: One of them is fine miss Seagal dead in trunk.
16:46
Speaker 1: Her body was found in a trunk, um strangled with
16:49
Speaker 1: a rope around her neck, and she was actually the
16:51
Speaker 1: granddaughter of a very well known Union general from the
16:57
Speaker 1: Civil War. So this was a pretty big l One
17:00
Speaker 1: of the other headlines was Chinese suspected of slaying white
17:03
Speaker 1: girl is in custody. Yikes. It's like how much more
17:07
Speaker 1: divisive can you get in the headline. It's like where
17:09
Speaker 1: they were definitely trying to push an agenda here and
17:12
Speaker 1: stir up hysteria and kind of like a panic you
17:16
Speaker 1: know too, We've got to do something about this problem.
17:19
Speaker 1: This the inherent threat that has now gone beyond. This
17:24
Speaker 1: is me speaking hypothetically, the voice of these kind of
17:27
Speaker 1: awful people. Um has gone beyond just threatening us monetarily,
17:31
Speaker 1: but there is a legitimate threat to our children. Things
17:35
Speaker 1: insidious menace, think of the children. We have a moral imperative.
17:40
Speaker 1: And this propagandization, this this smear campaign reached a fever pitch.
17:49
Speaker 1: It became a media tropes when when Elsie Seaguals death
17:56
Speaker 1: triggered a new era of this. It came from a
17:59
Speaker 1: pre existing thing, this white female victimization. In Chin's paper,
18:05
Speaker 1: they cite an eight film called King of the Opium Ring,
18:12
Speaker 1: and it features a clown who rescues a young white
18:16
Speaker 1: woman in dire straits on the balcony of a Chinese restaurant.
18:22
Speaker 1: This thing played around the country. People loved it. So
18:25
Speaker 1: it wasn't, you know, tabula raz It wasn't a blank
18:28
Speaker 1: slate for the labor unions to exploit this stuff emotionally.
18:34
Speaker 1: And the Seagull murder lad to lobbying for laws that
18:39
Speaker 1: completely banned white women, exclusively white women, not just from
18:45
Speaker 1: working at a Chinese restaurant, but from visiting one as
18:50
Speaker 1: a customer. And now we have the benefit of history
18:52
Speaker 1: when you think about the murder, Well, it's crazy too,
18:54
Speaker 1: because I mean, the language and the legislation is just
18:56
Speaker 1: absurdly Obviously it's racist, but it's really sexist that talks
19:00
Speaker 1: about how women are somehow weak willed and you know,
19:03
Speaker 1: appliable and easily you know, led astray, and just very
19:07
Speaker 1: condescending stuff. But as it turns out, this case had
19:11
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting conclusion. So it turns out that the
19:14
Speaker 1: apartment where else where Elsie Siegel's body was discovered, belonged
19:19
Speaker 1: to a man by the name of Leon Ling, whose
19:22
Speaker 1: cousin owned the restaurant um underneath the apartment, and they
19:28
Speaker 1: found a box with a whole lot of love letters
19:33
Speaker 1: from Um miss Siegel to this man Leon Ling, and
19:39
Speaker 1: apparently some of them sounded very as though she were
19:43
Speaker 1: pleading with him to not leave her or you know,
19:47
Speaker 1: to to stay with her. And it also came out
19:52
Speaker 1: that there was another player in the story. There was
19:55
Speaker 1: a man Um who was seen as being a potential
20:00
Speaker 1: jealous uh spurned lover of mis Seagull. And this man's
20:06
Speaker 1: name was Chew Gain, and he admitted to Um also
20:11
Speaker 1: being in a relationship with Elsie Uh, and that he
20:15
Speaker 1: had received anonymous letters threatening her life. And then eventually
20:21
Speaker 1: the police discovered another man by the name of Chew
20:24
Speaker 1: Gain who admitted to of having having had a relationship
20:27
Speaker 1: with Um Elsie and he received all these anonymous letters
20:30
Speaker 1: threatening his life and her life if they didn't in
20:34
Speaker 1: the relationship Um. Ultimately the cops arrested three people, and
20:40
Speaker 1: um Ling eventually left the country and was never apprehended,
20:44
Speaker 1: and the murders apparently an open case, you know, more
20:46
Speaker 1: than a years later. But all of this stuff just
20:49
Speaker 1: stirred up these wild rumors that things from like Elsie
20:52
Speaker 1: had killed herself to you know, the Chinese community had
20:56
Speaker 1: smuggled ling out of the country. So all of this
20:59
Speaker 1: just served to pour fuel on this you know, racist
21:03
Speaker 1: fire that was burning already, and because it was such
21:06
Speaker 1: a sensational story, it kind of spread this, you know,
21:10
Speaker 1: all over the country, and this this went city to city.
21:13
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that some conscientious local politicians
21:17
Speaker 1: didn't fight against these bills, some airs vetoed them. But
21:21
Speaker 1: there was a change there was There was this wave
21:26
Speaker 1: of people who were convinced, convinced that the enemy was
21:30
Speaker 1: within and the enemy was making delicious food as a
21:34
Speaker 1: cover for some larger, perfidious motive opponents. Luckily, luckily for me,
21:43
Speaker 1: the opponents were not successful in ridding cities of Chinese restaurants,
21:48
Speaker 1: and eventually the good news is that the organized movement
21:53
Speaker 1: against the restaurants started to fade out. One of the
21:58
Speaker 1: reasons the Chin sites that have faded out is pretty ugly,
22:01
Speaker 1: but it makes sense. It's the Immigration Act of nineteen
22:05
Speaker 1: four which made things worse in terms of immigration because
22:12
Speaker 1: it took the Chinese Exclusion Act that just banned Chinese laborers,
22:17
Speaker 1: and then it expanded it to include any immigrant from
22:20
Speaker 1: the Asian continent, which is insane. These laws, according to Chin,
22:27
Speaker 1: gave the white power structure that Nolan I mentioned earlier,
22:32
Speaker 1: a little bit of I guess you'd say reassurance, a
22:35
Speaker 1: security blanket where they said, well, we don't have to
22:38
Speaker 1: worry anymore about our jobs and our incomes being taken
22:42
Speaker 1: quote unquote, and this and the popular mindset meant that
22:47
Speaker 1: Asian Americans were not going to be a labor threat,
22:52
Speaker 1: at least not as much as they were seen at
22:54
Speaker 1: the time. Okay, So you that I felt like there
22:57
Speaker 1: was a silver lining coming there, Ben, and I just
22:59
Speaker 1: I just I don't see it. Yeah, he basically you're
23:02
Speaker 1: saying like it got better because it got worse, you know.
23:06
Speaker 1: I uh, yeah, I tell you know, I think I
23:09
Speaker 1: think that might be the case. And I guess what
23:11
Speaker 1: I'm getting at is it got better in terms of
23:13
Speaker 1: there weren't there wasn't as much of a problem for
23:17
Speaker 1: the folks that were doing horrible angry racist stuff. So
23:20
Speaker 1: therefore some of the horrible angry racist stuff stopped, I guess.
23:25
Speaker 1: But right, but it didn't. See that's the thing. It
23:30
Speaker 1: didn't get better for this power structure because it never
23:33
Speaker 1: got worse, you know what I mean, Like this this threat,
23:37
Speaker 1: this this perspective of a threat is clearly based on
23:41
Speaker 1: racist ideology. It's not based, it's it's not a solid
23:46
Speaker 1: economical argument, you know what I mean. I think it
23:49
Speaker 1: wasn't until the was it the forties that you that
23:53
Speaker 1: the US lifted this ban on Chinese immigration or no,
23:56
Speaker 1: it wasn't on immigration, It was on Chinese people becoming
23:59
Speaker 1: nash realized US citizens. So as as far as recently
24:04
Speaker 1: as the forties, this was this was a concern. But
24:07
Speaker 1: you know what's funny, like what always happens is what
24:09
Speaker 1: really turned the popular mindset, um, you know in the
24:13
Speaker 1: favor of some of these business owners, was you know,
24:18
Speaker 1: celebrities doing stuff and uh, you know we've got like
24:21
Speaker 1: Bob Hope and and Ronald Reagan were big fans of
24:25
Speaker 1: a place in San Francisco called Charlie Lowe's Forbidden City,
24:29
Speaker 1: which is such a cool name place. Um, and it
24:32
Speaker 1: was like a nightclub and a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown. Um. Yeah.
24:36
Speaker 1: I was this guy named Larry Ching who was considered, uh,
24:41
Speaker 1: the Chinese Sinatra, and I was writing this article in
24:44
Speaker 1: San Francisco Gate. There was also like a Chinese Sophie Tucker,
24:48
Speaker 1: a Chinese Fred Astaire, probably a Chinese Sammy Davis Jr.
24:53
Speaker 1: I don't know what have you, but they always had
24:56
Speaker 1: to be couched, you know, as some American you know,
25:00
Speaker 1: popular Chinese version of this exist. Um places like this
25:05
Speaker 1: because of the appearance of acceptance from influencers like you know,
25:10
Speaker 1: these movie stars and president presidents. Uh it's people started
25:14
Speaker 1: to kind of like chill out about it a little bit.
25:20
Speaker 1: So what changed? You know? We have these celebrity endorsements,
25:24
Speaker 1: one of which, famously by Man would later go on
25:27
Speaker 1: to serve as US President. But the wheels of legislation
25:32
Speaker 1: often grind slow. And as we said, it was until
25:35
Speaker 1: forty three that the specific ban on Chinese people naturalizing occurred.
25:39
Speaker 1: But even after that point, immigration laws made it incredibly
25:43
Speaker 1: difficult for people of Chinese origin to immigrate. And this
25:47
Speaker 1: was in this lasted up until get this, nineteen sixty eight,
25:54
Speaker 1: three years after the Immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen
25:58
Speaker 1: sixty five was an acted into law, So three years
26:02
Speaker 1: after it was supposed to happen, it happens pretty mind boggling.
26:06
Speaker 1: And it's in the six takes so long to do
26:09
Speaker 1: normal stuff in this country. I don't get it, um,
26:13
Speaker 1: but you know, now here we are as we said
26:17
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, they're just you know,
26:19
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of Chinese restaurants. It's like
26:23
Speaker 1: a hugely popular family meal night takeaway, you know thing.
26:28
Speaker 1: I love it, my kid loves it. It's very delicious,
26:33
Speaker 1: you know, tasty food, and a lot of it like too.
26:35
Speaker 1: This is it's such a such an amazing variety of
26:38
Speaker 1: things too, like in like different styles between Sechuan and
26:42
Speaker 1: Cantonese and all of the spices, and it's just I mean,
26:46
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a huge, huge fan of Chinese food. Yeah.
26:49
Speaker 1: When we were looking at some of the research here,
26:51
Speaker 1: my my question for some of my friends started becoming,
26:54
Speaker 1: when's the last time you're eate Chinese food? Everybody, it seems,
26:58
Speaker 1: had it in like the past month at some point,
27:01
Speaker 1: you know, people are voting with their taste butts. But
27:05
Speaker 1: the journey isn't over yet, because the authors say that
27:09
Speaker 1: they see clear echoes of the early twentieth century today.
27:13
Speaker 1: We've got a great quote from Chin who says there's
27:16
Speaker 1: a long tradition in the United States of good things
27:19
Speaker 1: being reserved for white folks and misguided economic race tinged xenophobia,
27:25
Speaker 1: the waves of discrimination have always proved to be unnecessary
27:28
Speaker 1: and counterproductive, and honestly, I agree because when we see
27:34
Speaker 1: these sort of who wasn't Mark Twain said that history
27:38
Speaker 1: doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. I'm paraphrasing there, yea.
27:43
Speaker 1: George Lucas always also said that about them, how brilliant
27:46
Speaker 1: the Star Wars prequels were, Like it rhymes. I don't
27:51
Speaker 1: know what he means by that, but the slight Red
27:53
Speaker 1: Letter media that does these amazing kind of lampoons of
27:56
Speaker 1: these Star Wars prequels, they're always using this clip of
27:58
Speaker 1: George Lucas thing about everything rhyming. I am going to
28:03
Speaker 1: check that out and tell you right now, I am
28:06
Speaker 1: in the mood for some orange chicken because just doing
28:10
Speaker 1: this this episode has made me so hungry, and I
28:13
Speaker 1: feel so fortunate that we're able to go find Chinese restaurants.
28:18
Speaker 1: I mean, what if this, what if this went the
28:20
Speaker 1: other way? Man? What if they were non existent? That
28:25
Speaker 1: would be a shame. That would be a crying shame.
28:29
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing I really love about living in
28:30
Speaker 1: Atlanta is that we have this amazing, um just explosion
28:35
Speaker 1: of fantastic you know, culinary options on We've got a
28:39
Speaker 1: place called Buford Highway where there are you know, everything
28:43
Speaker 1: from Korean to Chinese to all kinds of Latin American food,
28:48
Speaker 1: the Opian, whatever you want. And that's That's one thing
28:50
Speaker 1: that's cool about living in the United States is that
28:53
Speaker 1: you have access to all of this great stuff. And
28:57
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't have any other way. I think
28:59
Speaker 1: that's kind of what makes uh makes this country special.
29:03
Speaker 1: And this means that we are all fortunate. There's a
29:06
Speaker 1: happy ending to this story. Of course, no story ever
29:10
Speaker 1: really ends, so maybe it's better to say, at this
29:13
Speaker 1: point in time, it feels very fortunate. And for now
29:19
Speaker 1: that's where our episode ends, but not our show. We
29:24
Speaker 1: will be back very soon with more ridiculous history. And
29:27
Speaker 1: in the meantime, we'd like to hear from you, so yeah,
29:30
Speaker 1: write us your ideas and tell us. You know what
29:33
Speaker 1: a bummer this episode was. Spoiler alert, we know we're
29:40
Speaker 1: bummed out too, but you know, you gotta learn from
29:43
Speaker 1: this stuff and makes you appreciate where we are now.
29:47
Speaker 1: I guess, oh sorry, I'm just it's a it is
29:51
Speaker 1: a bummer because I'm starting to think about like we're
29:54
Speaker 1: not that much better. It's like people are still awful,
29:58
Speaker 1: and you know, there's just a whole another culture that
30:01
Speaker 1: people are acting this way towards. You know, there's really
30:04
Speaker 1: no silver lining at all here. I hate to sound
30:07
Speaker 1: so depressed about it, but it's just kind of making
30:08
Speaker 1: me realize, like this notion of like, oh, we've come
30:12
Speaker 1: so far, and maybe some of us have, but I
30:15
Speaker 1: don't know, like we've come so far in one regard
30:19
Speaker 1: and devolved so far in another. You know, I wonder,
30:24
Speaker 1: I wonder what other cycles like this exists. There's obviously
30:29
Speaker 1: there's obviously modern day versions of this where maybe some
30:35
Speaker 1: of the language has changed, but the intent is not.
30:39
Speaker 1: I know, I guess. I mean, I just saw an
30:40
Speaker 1: article the other day about like, you know, a Jewish
30:43
Speaker 1: deli in New York being sent an envelope with like
30:46
Speaker 1: a swastika on it and saying, you know, Jews get
30:49
Speaker 1: out and things like that. So, you know, I mean,
30:51
Speaker 1: this is I think this stuff is is informative and illuminating,
30:55
Speaker 1: but it's like it's just a bummer to me because
30:57
Speaker 1: it's like I don't feel like we've fixed it exactly.
31:00
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how do you fix something
31:02
Speaker 1: like this that's so deep seated in certain people. I
31:04
Speaker 1: guess it's not as widespread hopefully. I don't know. Well,
31:08
Speaker 1: it's also it may be a downer, but it's very
31:11
Speaker 1: very important to have knowledge of this out in the world.
31:15
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's true. I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. This
31:17
Speaker 1: is uh, this is so crushing to me. I just
31:19
Speaker 1: kind of like had a moment where I started to
31:21
Speaker 1: think about, you know, this is there's so many parallels
31:24
Speaker 1: with this story. I guess that we're seeing now in particular. Um,
31:27
Speaker 1: but you know, I think if if we just at
31:31
Speaker 1: least educate ourselves, then we can speak out when we
31:34
Speaker 1: see people acting like jerks and speaking and speaking out.
31:38
Speaker 1: We'd like to hear from you. What do you think
31:41
Speaker 1: about these sorts of cycles in history? Also, what's your
31:44
Speaker 1: favorite Chinese food? I think I've thrown that one in
31:46
Speaker 1: there because I'm hungry. You're into your the orange chicken guy.
31:49
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, it just came to me,
31:52
Speaker 1: but it's always a game time decision when I'm in
31:54
Speaker 1: front of the menu. I mean, when it comes to
31:56
Speaker 1: like super americanized Chinese food. Huge fan of orange chicken especially.
32:01
Speaker 1: I like, you know, the crappier, the better. I like
32:03
Speaker 1: Mall Orange Chicken. There's a particular, you know, flavor that
32:08
Speaker 1: Mall Orange Chicken has for me and a soft spot
32:10
Speaker 1: in my heart, very nostalgia because I remember being a
32:12
Speaker 1: kid and eating orange chicken at the mall. But when
32:14
Speaker 1: it comes to more traditional stuff, like you've you've done
32:18
Speaker 1: the dim something, Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've got a
32:20
Speaker 1: great place on Bover Highway called Canton House. Been there, yeah,
32:24
Speaker 1: which is Gratwin dim sum, also a lot of regional cuisine.
32:29
Speaker 1: Big fan of se Juan and I can't wait to
32:32
Speaker 1: get out there. Actually, I'm I'm gonna head out and
32:35
Speaker 1: grab something to eat. Yeah. The dim sums so cool
32:38
Speaker 1: because you literally don't know what you're getting. It's just
32:40
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. It's like a surprise every and every bite,
32:43
Speaker 1: and they're all like small bites. But now we're just
32:46
Speaker 1: talking about delicious Chinese food and we've got to get
32:48
Speaker 1: out of here, don't we been? Yes, yes, we do,
32:50
Speaker 1: my friends. So speaking of speaking out and uh, speaking
32:54
Speaker 1: of surprising things, speak out right to us, surprise us.
32:58
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, we're on this
33:00
Speaker 1: social media. Just search for us on Facebook, um and
33:03
Speaker 1: Instagram and you'll find us. You can also send us
33:06
Speaker 1: an email at ridiculous at how stuff works dot com,
33:10
Speaker 1: and we will be back with you very soon for
33:13
Speaker 1: more ridiculous history, depending on how long it takes for
33:16
Speaker 1: the Orange chickens