Podcast: Why we forget U.S. violence toward Chinatowns
This Los Angeles Times podcast looks at an episode of anti-Chinese violence in Los Angeles.
Here is a summary of the episode:
“Cities across the West are apologizing for attacks against their Chinatowns in the past. Why now? . . . .
This fall, a commemoration in downtown Los Angeles marked the 150th anniversary of when a mob lynched 18 Chinese men and boys — one of the biggest such killings in American history. The recent memorial comes in a year when many similar remembrances have bloomed across the United States. Anti-Asian hate crimes have soared during the pandemic, but that has also spurred an interest in learning the long, and long-hidden, history of such bigotry.”
We have blogged previously about what is known as the Chinese Massacre of 1871. See here and here. There is a detailed discussion of the massacre in the book The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 by Scott Zesch. As the publisher describes the book: “In October 1871, a simmering, small-scale turf war involving three Chinese gangs exploded into a riot that engulfed the small but growing town of Los Angeles. A large mob of white Angelenos, spurred by racial resentment, rampaged through the city and lynched some 18 people before order was restored. In The Chinatown War, Scott Zesch offers a compelling account of this little-known event, which ranks among the worst hate crimes in American history.”
Sadly, the Chinese Massacre of 1871 is unfortunately part of an effort to purge the Chinese from the United States in the 1800s. Beth Lew-Williams book The Chinese Must Go summarizes this history.
KJ