Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tzmfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T19:01:13.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Collisions at the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Kitty Calavita
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the ramifications of the intersections of gender, race, and class ideologies for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws in the years immediately following their passage. Drawing from government documents and archival data, I argue that the notions of gender, race, and class that permeated the legislative debate contained significant incoherences and self-contradictions, and that many of the dilemmas surrounding the enforcement of the exclusion laws against Chinese women resulted from these collisions. Faced with conflicting mandates derived from, for example, racism and patriarchy, enforcement officers had to choose between equally powerful discourses. Their ad hoc and often pragmatic approach to such dilemmas contrasted sharply with a policy process that otherwise appeared to be driven by unquestioned—and unquestionable—moral mandates. In concluding, I note the implications for our understanding of the contingencies and instabilities of ideology and the legal practices of which it is part.

Type
Administrative Officials Apply the Law: Two Historical Examples
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 2006 , pp. 249 - 282
Copyright
© 2006 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

References

Bredbenner, Candice Lewis (1998) A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty (2001) “Chinese Exclusion and the Open Door with China: Structural Contradictions and the ‘Chaos’ of Law, 1882–1910,” 10 Social and Legal Studies 203–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
California State Legislature (1878) Chinese Immigration: Its Social, Moral, and Political Effects. Report to the California State Senate of Its Special Committee on Chinese Immigration. Sacramento: E. P. Thompson, Superintendent of State Printing.Google Scholar
Canon, Bradley C., & Johnson, Charles A. (1999) Judicial Policies: Implementation and Impact, 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavanagh, Ralph, & Sarat, Austin (1980) “Thinking about Courts: Toward and Beyond a Jurisprudence of Judicial Competence,” 14 Law & Society Rev. 371–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Sucheng (1991) “The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1870–1943,” in Chan, S., ed., Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Chang, Iris (2004) The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Chu, Ping (1963) Chinese Labor in California, 1850–1880. Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Coolidge, Mary Roberts (1909) Chinese Immigration. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Congressional Record (1882) 47th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 13, pt. 4.Google Scholar
Congressional Record (1892) 52d Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 23, pt. 8: 3480.Google Scholar
Congressional Record (1893) 53d Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 25, pt. 2: 2444.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1990) “A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Law and Politics,” in Kairys, D., ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, 2d ed. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L. (1980) “Environmental Constraints on the Behavior of Judges: A Representational Model of Judicial Decision Making,” 14 Law & Society Rev. 343–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glick Schiller, Nina, & Fouron, Georges Eugene (2001) Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long-Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyory, Andrew (1998) Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Chapel Hill: The Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Herbert (1996) “The Problem of Race in American Labor History,” 24 Reviews in American History 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirata, Lucie Cheng (1979) “Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in 19th Century America,” 5 Signs 3–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Alan (1985) “The Ideology of Law: Advances and Problems in Recent Applications of the Concept of Ideology to the Analysis of Law,” 19 Law & Society Rev. 11–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Charles A. (1979) “Lower Court Reactions to Supreme Court Decisions: A Quantitative Examination,” 23 American J. of Political Science 792–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Charles A. (1987) “Law, Politics and Judicial Decision-Making: Lower Court Uses of Supreme Court Decisions,” 21 Law & Society Rev. 325–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones-Correa, Michael (1998) Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kairys, David (1982) “Freedom of Speech,” in Kairys, D., ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Kilwain, John C., & Brisbin, Richard A. Jr. (1997) “Policy Convergence in a Federal Judicial System: The Application of Intensified Scrutiny Doctrines by State Supreme Courts,” 41 American J. of Political Science 122–48.Google Scholar
Klare, Karl E. (1982) “Critical Theory and Labor Relations Law,” in Kairys, D., ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Lee, Erika (2003) At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943. Chapel Hill: The Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Leung, Peter C. Y. (1984) One Day, One Dollar: Locke, California and the Chinese Farming Experience in the Sacramento Delta. El Cerrito, CA: Chinese/Chinese American History Project.Google Scholar
Ling, Huping (1998) Surviving on the Gold Mountain: A History of Chinese American Women and their Lives. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.Google Scholar
Lyman, Stanford (2000) “The ‘Chinese Question’ and American Labor Historians,” 7 New Politics 113–48.Google Scholar
Matsuda, Mari J. (1989) “When the First Quail Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential Method,” 11 Women's Rights Law Reports 7–10.Google Scholar
McClain, Charles J. (1994) In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
McClain, Charles J., & McClain, Laurene Wu (1991) “The Chinese Contribution to the Development of American Law,” in Chan, S., ed., Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
McKee, Delber L. (1977) Chinese Exclusion Versus the Open Door Policy, 1900–1906: Clashes over the China Policy in the Roosevelt Era. Detroit, MI: Wayne State Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Mink, Gwendolyn (1986) Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875–1920. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha (1990) Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha (1997) Not Only for Myself: Identity, Politics and the Law. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Pacelle, Richard L., & Baum, Lawrence A. (1992) “Supreme Court Authority in the Judiciary: A Study of Remands,” 20 American Politics Q. 169–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, John S. W. (2004) Elusive Citizenship: Immigration, Asian Americans, and the Paradox of Civil Rights. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Peffer, George Anthony (1999) If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration before Exclusion. Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Riggs, Fred Warren (1950) Pressures on Congress: A Study of the Repeal of Chinese Exclusion. New York: King's Crown Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salyer, Lucy E. (1991) “‘Laws Harsh as Tigers’: Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws, 1891–1924,” in Chan, S., ed., Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Salyer, Lucy E. (1995) Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Sandmeyer, Elmer Clarence (1939) The Anti-Chinese Movement in California. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Saxton, Alexander (1971) The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A. (1996) “The Influence of Stare Decisis on the Votes of United States Supreme Court Justices,” 40 American J. of Political Science 971–1003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., & Spaeth, Harold J. (1993) The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Songer, Donald, et al. (1994) “The Hierarchy of Justice: Testing the Principal-Agent Model of Supreme Court-Circuit Court Interactions,” 38 American J. of Political Science 673–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spriggs, James F. (1996) “The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact,” 40 American J. of Political Science 1122–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Todd (2002) “‘Tender Ties’: Husbands' Rights and the Racial Exclusion in Chinese Marriage Cases, 1882–1924,” 27 Law and Social Inquiry 271–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straus, Oscar (1908) “The Spirit and Letter of Exclusion,” 187 North American Rev. 481–5.Google Scholar
Tang, Ms. Vincente (1983) “Chinese Women Immigrants and the Two-Edged Sword of Habeas Corpus,” 18 Bulletin of the Chinese Historical Society of America 2–6.Google Scholar
Therborn, Goran (1980) The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Tsai, Shih-Shan Henry (1986) The Chinese Experience in America. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration (1904) Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration (1905) Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration (1906) Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration (1907) Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration (1909) Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration (1910) Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress (1877) Senate. Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration. Senate Report No. 689. 44th Cong., 2d sess.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress; (1891) House of Representatives. Select Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. Chinese Immigration. House Report No. 4048. 51st Cong., 2d sess.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress; (1906) House of Representatives. Compilation of Facts Concerning the Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws. House Document 847. 59th Cong., 1st sess.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor (1904) Decision No. 11. Congressional Information Service, C106-11.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of the Treasury (1889) Circular 409. Congressional Information Service, T104-16.409.Google Scholar
Yung, Judy (1995) Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cases Cited

Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889).Google Scholar
In re Ah Moy, 21 Federal Reporter 785 (1884).Google Scholar
In re Ah Quan, 21 Federal Reporter 182 (1884).Google Scholar
In re Ah Yup, C.C. Cal. (1878).Google Scholar
In re Chae Chan Ping, 36 Federal Reporter 431 (1888).Google Scholar
In re Chung Toy Ho, 42 Federal Reporter 398, 399 (1890).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
In re Yung Sing Hee, 36 Federal Reporter 437, at 439 (1888).Google Scholar
Mrs. Gue Lim v. United States, 176 U.S. 459 (1900).Google Scholar
U.S. v. Ju Toy, 198 U.S. 253 (1905).Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Angell Treaty, 22 Stat. 826 (1880).Google Scholar
Burlingame Treaty, 16 Stat. 639 (1868).Google Scholar
Chinese Exclusion Act, 22 Stat. 58 (1882).Google Scholar
Chinese Exclusion Extension Act, 33 Stat. 428 (1904).Google Scholar
Exclusion Law, 23 Stat. 115 (1884).Google Scholar
Expatriation Act, 34 Stat. 1228 (1907).Google Scholar
Geary Act, 27 Stat. 25 (1892).Google Scholar
Immigration Act of 1891, 26 Stat. 1084 (1891).Google Scholar
Naturalization Act, 10 Stat. 604 (1855).Google Scholar
Page Act, 18 Stat. 477 (1875).Google Scholar
Scott Act, 25 Stat. 504 (1888).CrossRefGoogle Scholar