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Racial Purges, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

In a two-year period, 1885-86, over 168 communities in America forcibly expelled Chinese residents from their midst. This essay, inspired by historian Beth Lew-Williams's book, THE CHINESE MUST GO, investigates the nineteenth-century purges of Chinese residents that occurred throughout the American west. I make three arguments. First, these acts of racial and political terror complicate our understanding of racial violence in America. Many of the actions were denounced, but they were also surprisingly effective in forcing business and political leaders to support the indefinite suspension of Chinese migration. Perpetrators faced almost no legal repercussions, and unlike for freed persons, racial …