Making Chinese American Histories Part of Everyday Life

For Ted Gong, a retired State Department diplomat, recent efforts in Texas, Virginia, and elsewhere by officials who want to outlaw the sale of real estate to Chinese nationals are part of a long and nefarious tradition in American history.

Gong, the DC chapter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, is the executive director of the Washington-based 1882 Foundation, named for the year Congress passed the first iteration of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

This act “prevented Chinese from immigrating to the United States and becoming American citizens,” he says, and it represented the first time the US government targeted a single nationality in its legislation. Fueled by xenophobia, the law had formidable staying power; it was only repealed in 1943, against the backdrop of World War II.

“China was an ally for us. So, it’s not very cool to say that the guys that you’re fighting with are actually not suitable to become Americans,” Gong says. “But there was never any apology, never a statement of regret. Plus, after the Exclusion Law was rescinded, [the government] still kept immigration restrictions on people by nationality. For Chinese, that meant that the number of legal immigrants that you could bring in the United States each year was 105.”

That the government had failed more than a century later to issue any apology for the law was a glaring and insulting omission for Gong and for fellow members of the Chinese American community. In 2009, Gong and others formed the 1882 Project, whose goal was to secure congressional resolutions that recognized the harm caused by the law, condemned it, and furthermore reaffirmed the US commitment to upholding civil rights for all its inhabitants.

The group succeeded; in 2011, the Senate unanimously condemned the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the House followed suit in 2012, leaving the members of the 1882 Project with renewed vigor, a fresh set of objectives, and an amended name. Now known as the 1882 Foundation, it proceeded to develop a multipronged strategy to educate the public more broadly about the Exclusion Act and its enduring significance. Indeed, at its most elemental level the 1882 Foundation believes that the act poses a fundamental question:

“Who has a right to become an American? We say the answer is not race-based, but there are times when that is what is done,” Gong says, referencing not just the Chinese Exclusion Act but other discriminatory and harmful government policies, such as the Japanese Internment Bill and the Indian Removal Act, not to mention any number of other policies that have marginalized and infringed upon the civil rights of Black and Hispanic Americans.

These laws, Gong points out, were enacted not by fiat but through conventional democratic processes.

“For all our values and our desires for the type of country we want, we are not infallible,” he says. “What is important is that Congress reviews and then acknowledges the wrong and corrects it. We are one of the few countries and governments that reconsider a past mistake and recognize it. That is a reaffirmation of the very values that we started with.”

Such values—respect for civil rights and equality—are the 1882 Foundation’s bedrock and inform its initiatives. Among them is the annual 1882 Symposium, which brings together representatives from a group of historical societies, museums, and federal agencies with a stake in the welfare of communities of Chinese and Asian descent to network and discuss best practices in engaging and amplifying issues of concern to the community and to Americans in general.

Another is the development of educational materials that introduce the Chinese American experience into classrooms.

“We really try to meet people where they are,” explains Wei Gan, the Foundation’s deputy executive director, explaining the organization’s approach to what some observers might call an effort to decolonize the curriculum. “Instead of saying ‘Let’s make this more ethnically diverse or more racially diverse, and let’s talk about the racist history of the United States,’ we focus more on themes.”

Gan cites the example of middle school social studies classes, where teachers often engage students in discussions of democratic processes and civic engagement. The 1882 Foundation offers ways to weave the experiences of Chinese Americans into that discussion in a manner that feels organic.

“We include the classic cases that Chinese Americans have taken to the Supreme Court, like birthright and citizenship,” Gan says. “So, it’s not in your face, like ‘let’s include Chinese American or Asian American history.’ Rather, you’re learning about American values, American processes, and these are examples that incorporate people who are not [descended from] white Europeans.”

The question, adds Gong, is: “How do we teach American principles and values and then include within that lesson examples from Asian American, or in our case Chinese, history?”

Talk Story is yet another project of the Foundation. It includes an oral history archive and storytelling project as well as efforts to preserve historical sites—those that still exist as well as those that no longer stand.

“One of the key things of Talk Story is the creation of the communities that come together when they hear and share stories,” Gong says. Fostering community is a guiding principle of the 1882 Foundation, he adds, and the Foundation holds regular public events for such exchanges. Indeed, a Mellon grant running through 2024 will help support the construction of a new 1882 Foundation space dedicated expressly to bringing people together for storytelling and similar community-building programs.

The grant also supports its efforts at historic preservation of sites such as the Summit Tunnel, a vital part of the Central Pacific Railroad that ran through the Sierra Nevada mountains and was built by Chinese immigrant laborers. The 1882 Foundation also wants to systematize the preservation of local Chinatowns—of which there are more than fifty in the United States—figuring out what defines a Chinatown and how best to remember and honor it, especially in the face of gentrification and ever evolving urban landscapes.

“The idea is to preserve some part of Chinatown that people recognize as Chinatown,” Gong says. In DC, the Foundation’s Chinatown offices are near the Capital One Arena, home to the NBA Washington Wizards, and down the block from a temple and an acupuncture shop. “The idea of preserving these shop spaces, it’s not to preserve the physical part of the shop, but to preserve the character.”

Oral histories, he adds, are essential to that goal and work in conjunction with both physical and digital markers highlighting Chinese American communities and history.

“How wonderful would that be if you could walk around Chinatown, doing your banking and you’re going to the sports arena, or you’re going to buy something at Walgreens, but you are also able to experience and see and have a tactile sense of some of the stories that were there,” he says.

Ultimately, Gan adds, the aim is “to not relegate history to the past, and not to speak of it as history, but to keep it in the present, to keep it in conversation, to make sure that people are aware that, you know, if you stand on this street, this is what there used to be and this is what happened here.”

History is part of everyday life, she says, and the 1882 Foundation strives to ensure that that truism is made plain. When you’re at the arena in DC, for instance, the hope is that you’ll experience it as it exists now but with an additional, heightened awareness of what it was before.

“You don’t have to go to a separate museum where you archive objects that you removed from that place,” she said. “You’re there. You’re occupying history.”