Asian Women in America

    America. The land of opportunity and the ideology where dreams come true, where every single individual has the right to achieve these dreams and are naturally created to be equal. During the 1800's was when the Asian American community, especially those of Chinese heritage, waved along the American homelands. And it wasn't long until they were experiencing heavy racial issues and discrimination. Many Chinese immigrants in particular often worked as railroad laborers with unequal wages that was commonly known as "cheap Chinese labor". But unfortunately it wasn't just the average Chinese man receiving all the racial discrimination.

     In my opinion, I believe that the gender roles played a huge role in how Asian American immigrants were treated in the United States. Unfortunately, I also believe that the women was targeted with different racial issues compared to men. Many common words often sound too familiar in regards to Chinese women in general, such as the "dragon lady" which was a Western saying to call a woman to be stereo-typically mysterious or sneaky, from common racial concepts of how Asian American women are perceived by the "dominant" White population. Another slang that was in favor of the Asian American women is a "China doll", the idea of Asian women being delicate, beautiful, and fragile just as a China doll would be.

     While many laws were being passed and regulated to eventually abolish the Chinese people in the United States, it came to show that there was a huge wave of prostitution by Chinese women. It didn't take long until news struck of these poorly treated Chinese women who worked under prostitution either partly tricked, abducted by others, or brought upon for trade in America. By the new wave of Asian prostitution, the ideology of Chinese women and men were slowly deteriorating. Soon, Americans eventually banned the immigration of those with Asian heritage. The Page Act of 1875 was the first federal immigration law that spoke directly to the Asian population. This Act was believed to pledge that all immigrants from Asia entering America was considered to be undesirable for the common good in the United States. With racial discrimination of gender roles in the Asian American community, and with different racial segregation laws and treatment, it was a huge epidemic for the Asian American population living in America during this time. It wasn't until after World War II where the United States and China fell under alliance, and eventually had things turned around in immigration and in the ways Americans perceive Asian Americans.