The Bay Area Needs to Support its Asian American Communities

In 2021, the violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) has been highlighted due to the climb in outrageous crimes. There have been countless attacks and murders against AAPI including a 91-year-old man who was shoved to the ground in Oakland, a 64-year-old woman who was mugged in San Jose and even a murder of an 84-year-old man after he was attacked in the middle of the day in San Francisco. 

Where does this hate come from? In the Bay Area, it has stemmed from centuries of discrimination. In the mid-1800s, there was a huge wave of Chinese immigration into San Francisco filled with men and women looking for work on railroads, agriculture and mining during the Gold Rush. Since these immigrants were desperate for work, they allowed themselves to be underpaid and work in harsh conditions. Because Chinese immigrants were willing to work for less, the first- and second-generation Americans believed that they were losing out on jobs. This eventually led to discriminatory laws that prevented Chinese immigration including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which suspended immigration for 10 years. 

The Chinese immigrants were slowly being pushed out – until the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. This catastrophic disaster led to rampant fires across the city that burned down businesses, homes and legal paperwork that protected Chinese immigrants. Although devastating and a setback for the Chinese-American business owners, this actually ended up helping the immigrants that were already in the States. This allowed them to claim American citizenship because their immigration paperwork had burned up. It took until the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 for Chinese immigration to be accepted again. Although a huge win for Chinese immigrants at the time, the decades of discrimination has led to the current state of prejudice that AAPI communities face in the city.