Invisibility

Abstract

Invisibility Grace Ji-Sun Kim (bio) The history of racism and prejudice against Asian Americans shows the long record of suffering and oppression of Asian immigrants. In the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, discrimination, racism, and xenophobia marked Asian immigrants as undesirable and un-American. White America precisely defines who and what is American, which denotes privileged selectivity in choosing who can immigrate and become naturalized according to what they feel is acceptable. When the Chinese Exclusion Act expired, it was extended by the Geary Act of 1892, which barred the Chinese from entering the United States. The Geary Act ended in 1943. During World War II, Japanese Americans lost everything they possessed and were forced into internment camps as they became national threats to white Americans. Anti-Asian racism has been part of the fabric of the American story. Race and the American cultural perception of one's race have been the determining factors in distinguishing between the "good" immigrants and the "bad" ones, the better assimilable ones from the unassimilable ones, the racialized ones, and the neutral ones. Immigrants deemed worthy of American citizenship were naturalized; those who were not were excluded. The McCarran-Walter Act (1952) abolished the racial restrictions put in place by the Naturalization Act of 1790, which limited naturalization to "free white persons." This meant women, nonwhite persons, and indentured servants (who were mostly Asian Americans) could not become naturalized citizens. Over time, access to citizenship became more expansive, but the racial restrictions were not eliminated entirely until 1952. This produced the category of "aliens" who were ineligible for citizenship, which largely affected Asian immigrants and limited their rights, as noncitizens, to property ownership, representation in courts, public employment, and voting. Thus, many generations of Asian Americans were made invisible. Without citizenship, they were pushed to the margins, and they did not have the rights to challenge their marginality and invisibility in the courts. [End Page 111] Xenophobia is a defining feature of American life. Xenophobia emerged as soon as nonwhites immigrated to America, and it triumphed in the 1920s. The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act was a strict policy of ethnic quotas that nearly closed the door on immigration from Asia for over forty years. When mainstream, explicit forms of xenophobia began to wane during the civil rights movement, it merely bubbled away from the surface, still lurking, only to reemerge in the last half century—namely, during the Trump administration. Xenophobia has continued the legacy of discriminatory immigration policies, as reflected in the Muslim ban (2017) introduced by President Trump that banned foreigners from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the United States for ninety days. Xenophobia continues to marginalize immigrants and people of color who have been in America for centuries. Asian Americans are pushed into an ambiguous space wherein their supposed political meekness and social reserve prohibit others from viewing them as cultural leaders. They are not represented in positions of power or seen making visible change, in part because American society does not believe in them doing so. Through ambitious activism and diverse dialogues, Asian Americans must redefine their cultural past, which has rendered their discrimination invisible and unimportant in the American story. In this racially ambiguous space and probationary national identity, Asian Americans have remained silent and apathetically endured small injustices as part of their daily existence. In recent decades, American culture has shifted from being fearfully hateful of Asians to lauding them, proclaiming the "rise of Asian Americans" to be the exemplar for all other immigrants and ethnic minorities. This narrative is due to the model-minority myth and honorary white status, which is false and only pits Asian Americans against other people of color to create tension and animosity. Furthermore, these myths erase the long history of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and indentured work that Asian Americans have experienced from the beginning of their immigration. As a result, their suffering and difficulties are made invisible, which results in racism being discussed in "Black and white" terms. Invisibility becomes a common experience among Asian Americans and especially Asian American women, who are doubly made invisible—by not only the white culture but also the Asian subculture that...