Assignment:
Part 1: Keyword "Exclusion" Instructions: (pp. 82-87) Answer the following questions. Provide a passage from the readings in addition to your interpretation to support your responses.
1. How did the US primarily enforce a culture of exclusion against Asian Americans? What was the "method" or "tool" they used?
2. How did exclusion shape Asian Americans' experiences? What happened as a result of their exclusion?
Part 2: JACL "The Journey from Gold Mountain: The Asian American Experience" (pp. 1-14, stop right before "A Changing Nation") Instructions: Answer the following questions. Provide a passage from the readings in addition to your interpretation to support your responses.
1. What types of work did 19th and early 20th century Asian Americans enter upon arriving in the US?
2. What did anti-Asian racism stem from? What were the fears of the US "nativists"?
3. As we've learned from "The Power of an Illusion," the conversation on race in US is often limited to a "black-white binary." That is to say, people in the US often talk about race as though it only involves black and white people. This was also the case in the 19th.
4. When Asian immigrants first started coming to the US. Based on both readings, how do Asian Americans "fit" into this racial binary? Are they categorically "black" or "white"?
Instructions: Select one of the following exclusion acts from US history and gather more information on it from the JACL reading. Write a short paragraph explaining the act and speculating its impact on US society.
Exclusion Laws:
1. Nationality Law of 1790
2. Page Law 1875
3. Chinese Exclusion Act 1882
4. California Anti-Miscegenation Law 1884
5. Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907
6. California Alien Land Law 1913
7. Cable Act 1922-1931
8. National Origins Act 1924
9. Japanese Incarceration 1942-44