San Jose is latest city to apologize for past racist treatment of Chinese

San Jose Research Library & Archives

San Jose residents visit the smoldering ruins of Chinatown after teh 1887 arson fire.

Some jurisdictions in the U.S. are beginning to take a long, hard look and acknowledging their past history of discrimination against Asian Americans.

San Jose, California is the latest and largest city to issue an apology for its treatment of the Chinese community, specifically the torching of the city's Chinatown in the mid-1800s when anti-Chinese bias was at its most blatant.

The San Jose City Council passed the resolution unanimously. “It’s important for members of the Chinese American community to know that they are seen and that the difficult conversations around race and historic inequities include the oppression that their ancestors suffered,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.

The apologies come at a time of a resurgence of anti-Asian hate resulting in attacks on all Asians, not just people of Chinese descent. According to the community based organization, Stop AAPI Hate, over 9,000 racist incidents against AAPI have occurred since the Trump administration began using racist rhetoric, blaming the pandemic on China.

Throughout its history, San Jose has had five separate Chinatowns, one of which was the largest Chinatown in the U.S.

The most well-known was the Second Market Street Chinatown. In 1887 the city declared the neighborhood a public nuisance to make room for a new city hall. Days later, before eviction notices could be issued, the Chinatown was deliberately set on fire displacing 1,400 residents.

At the time, “The city said, ‘No, it’s a vile community, and we don’t want it downtown,’” said Gerrye Kee Wong of Chinese Historical and Cultural Project, speaking to the city council on behalf of the resolution.

Today, almost 150 years later, San Jose has 1 million residents. Asian Americans make up 38.1% of San Jose, the largest ethnic group in the city. Latinos are 31.2% of the city, followed by Whites, 23.3%, according to the 2020 Census.

"An apology for grievous injustices cannot erase the past, but admission of the historic wrongdoings committed can aid us in solving the critical problems of racial discrimination facing America today," rads the San Jose's resolution.

In May, the City of Antioch, California became the first to apologize for its treatment of early Chinese immigrants, who dug secret tunnels to commute home from work because they were barred from walking city streets after sunset.

Other cities in the Pacific Northwest have issued apologies in decades past. The State of California also apologized in 2009 to Chinese workers and Congress has apologized for the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was approved in 1882 and made Chinese residents the targets of the nation’s first law limiting immigration based on race or nationality.

In November of 2020, the City of Watsonville, a few miles south of San Jose, issued an official apology to the Filipino American community for the racist attacks in 1930 by white mobs against Filipino American farm workers, that became known as the Watsonville Riots. Over several days, hundreds of Filipinos were hunted down and beaten, resulting in one worker's death.

Connie Young Yu, a historian and author of “Chinatown, San Jose, USA,” said her grandfather was a teenage refugee from the 1887 fire. Her father was born in the a new San Jose Chinatown built built after the fire. The new enclave was established in a different location with the help of German immigrant John Heinlen, whose life was threatened. That new Chinatown, known as Heninlenville, eventually disappeared after the Chinese population dwindled.

Yu said San Jose's official recognition and apology gives her an “enormous sense of reconciliation and a sense of peace,” she told the Tri-City Herald.

“This is beyond an apology," added Yu. "It is taking responsibility, which is a beautiful thing to me.” 

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