California Apologizes to Chinese Americans

[Guest Tony n Terrific]

On July 17, the California legislature quietly approved a landmark bill to apologize to the state's Chinese-American community for racist laws enacted as far back as the mid-19th century Gold Rush, which attracted about 25,000 Chinese from 1849 to 1852. The laws, some of which were not repealed until the 1940s, barred Chinese from owning land or property, marrying whites, working in the public sector and testifying against whites in court.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090721/us_time/08599191198100

 

{edit} to replace mid�h, with mid-19th, and to quote tag.

Edited July 22, 2009 by dnoblett (see edit history)

[Smitty]

It's the least they could do!

[tonado]

Where is the money?

[dnoblett]

Where is the money?

 

Fong does not plan to press for financial compensation for the surviving victims of the state and federal laws in question, despite the Japanese-American precedent. More important than individual compensation, he says, is to help educate younger generations about the mistakes of the past

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090721/us_time/08599191198100

 

This is a refreshing attitude compared to demands for reparations made by others.

[Smitty]

I can only think of two other cases where reparations have been requested. Each case is different.

 

In this one, you have immigrants that were denied the rights that everyone one else had, based only on race.

 

In another case, people were captured and sent across the world to live a life of misery.

 

The third case being where legal residents were forced to give up everything other than what they could carry.

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

It's too late.

[fineart]

That is great progress. Compared to African Americans, Chinese Americans have not fighted against discrimination and oppression as much as black Americans have done. That should be one of the reasons that this apology came this late.

 

Recently I read Uncle Tom's Children, written by Richard Wright, and In love and Trouble, written by Alice Walker. Those writtings help me know African Americans way better. Before, my head had the bias view imposed by the writtings available for me to read and most of those writtings had negative view to black people. After I read these two great black writers' works, I realize how rich spiritualiy and creativity that many black people have. Alice Walker's writings are more soul-stirring than I can expect a woman writer could write. And I have not read more than these two writers' works yet. I am sure I will have countless surprisings to explore if I have time reading other black writers' works.

[griz326]

Apologies are cheap and not worth the paper they are written on.

 

"I'm sorry Griz."

 

I heard that many times from contractors building my home who made stupid mistakes (costing me thousands $$$). At one point, I took my shot gun from its wall mount, jacked a round into the chamber and said, "I'm going to shoot the next SOB who apologizes to me." I got no more apologies and the number of mistakes dropped to a level that could be accommodated by human error. This happened because they knew I would shoot them and deal with the consequences.

 

Symbolic gestures are for fools. Happy horse manure feeds no one.

Edited July 26, 2009 by griz326 (see edit history)

[Smitty]

Like I said, it's the least they could do.

[Feathers268]

I hope I don't get too political here, but this type of crap pisses me off.

Of course the state legislature passes tis quietly. The state is issuing IOU's, again. the budget is late, again, and they have to go find some meaningless thing to do like apologize for something that at this time we can't do anything about anyway.

Sure what was done was wrong, but so was what happened to the Irish, Italians and almost every ethnic group upon first coming to the states. Now is not the time, and California is not the place for this. The present and the future is where they need to be focused, NOT THE past!