Cupertino Vice Mayor Defends Chinese Exclusion Act As Not Racist

CUPERTINO, CA — Cupertino Vice Mayor Liang-Fang Chao defended the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in an email group of Cupertino Union School District parents last week, arguing that the first and only federal legislation to explicitly suspend people of a specific nationality from entering the United States was not racist.

Chao, who was born in Taiwan and has lived in Cupertino since 1999, sent the emails Friday to an unofficial “CUSD Parents” Google group that has around 2,000 members. One of them was posted to Twitter over the weekend by Neil Park-McClintick, the chair of the advocacy group Cupertino for All.

In emails subsequently shared with Patch, Chao argued that the Chinese Exclusion Act — which was passed amid a rise in anti-Chinese hostility over fears that Chinese workers who immigrated to the United States in the 1850s were taking jobs away from American workers — was not rooted in racism because the text of the act only stated that “Chinese laborers” would be excluded, not “all Asians.”

“It was really a labor issue where American laborers wish to keep cheaper Chinese laborers out, for good reasons,” Chao said in the emails. “We are doing similar things today, through the H1 visa process. We don't want to give work visas to people that will take American jobs.”

The text of the Chinese Exclusion Act specifically cited “Chinese laborers,” but the few nonlaborers who attempted to immigrate to the United States were largely unable to because the law excluded both “skilled and unskilled laborers” from entering the country, resulting in a near total ban of Chinese immigrants.

Cupertino's population is more than two-thirds Asian and Asian American. Chao urged city parents not to "get offended so easily like some people do nowadays.”

“We are having a discussion of historic events,” Chao said. “And we are discussing the [judgment] of policy makers at a time that is totally different from ours. I am sure that those people will be offended by many things we do today, as we are offended by what they did then, based on the current standards.”

Chao admitted in the emails that “certainly Chinese people were discriminated against pretty badly in the past by some people” but added that “there are always good people who are welcoming to immigrants in this country.”

Chao also claimed that the California's K-12 curriculum focuses too much on how Chinese people have been discriminated against.

"We don't want to be portrayed as victims, suffering from some oppression, when most of us have escaped another worse oppressive society in our own country to come to the U.S. for a better life for the next generation," Chao wrote in the emails.

'Slap In The Face'

Many Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1850s to work in gold mines and factories and on railroads. They were praised at first for being diligent workers, but sentiment soon turned negative as Americans feared competition for jobs. The hostility included documented instances of violence against Chinese people, including the burning of Chinatowns across the West Coast.

Chao's colleagues on the city council distanced themselves from her comments.

"The Chinese Exclusion Act was obviously racist legislation," Mayor Darcy Paul said in a statement to Patch.

Councilmember Kitty Moore also said the act was "clearly racist as evidenced by the name of the Act."

Moore added: "While we always want to support and encourage thoughtful present discussions about racial equality, we must be mindful of the harm which past policies caused and acknowledge the circumstances carefully and sensitively."

Councilmember Hung Wei said Monday afternoon that she agreed with her colleagues and added: "It is unfortunate that Vice Mayor Chao made comments on the Chinese Exclusion Act without going deeper into the history of the many laws excluding Asians spanning years."

In a Facebook post Monday, Sunnyvale Councilmember Alysa Cisneros said that she felt "extremely confident in saying that the Chinese Exclusion Act was racist."

She added: "I also feel very comfortable calling for Cupertino Vice Mayor Liang Chao to disavow her own remarks and apologize to the entire community."

Chao's defense of the Chinese Exclusion Act was a "slap in the face" to the efforts of civil rights groups that led to both the Senate and House of Representatives issuing apologies for the law, according to former Mayor Gilbert Wong, the president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Wong said he is friends with Chao but added in a statement that he was "appalled" by her "hateful words" and called on her to apologize at the next City Council meeting.

"I respect Vice Mayor Chao's viewpoint, but we also need to call out and say, 'This is not right,'" Wong told Patch.

Several parents also pushed back against Chao’s comments in the email thread. Yi Ding told Patch Sunday that he was “shocked and angered” by her statements.

“I don’t know what frame of mind a person would be in to learn about a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act and think maybe it wasn’t racist and maybe there were some good reasons for passing it,” Ding said. “Furthermore, to email it out to 2,000 parents, most of whom are Asian Americans — it was definitely not expected.”

The Law In Context

Chao served for two years on the school board before being elected to the City Council in 2018. She told Patch in a statement Sunday that she brought up the Chinese Exclusion Act in the context of discussing critical race theory and examining historical events through a racial lens.

Critical race theory is a decades-old legal and academic framework that looks at and critiques how race and racism shaped U.S. laws and institutions that remain in place today and helped perpetuate racism and a kind of caste system that continues, to the disadvantage of people of color. The phrase has become a catchall for various claims about racism and race relations in the United States having nothing to do with critical race theory itself.

Chao said her point was to underscore how the prejudice that Chinese Americans faced cannot be explained by “racism alone” and that historical events should be evaluated in their historic context — thus helping her make an argument against the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools.

Chao doubled down on her claim that the Chinese Exclusion Act was not rooted in racism because “the entire Asian race was not excluded” and “the main reason was to protect domestic laborers who thought those Chinese laborers with lower wages were taking their jobs."

“I think racism is when one discriminates against another of a different race and thinks the other race is inferior,” Chao said. “But to the contrary, the Chinese laborers were excluded because they were too good at their jobs. Is that racism? Or just fear of foreigners who are better than us?”

After this article was published, Chao sent another statement to Patch on Monday night stating that the Chinese Exclusion Act was racist, adding: "I have never said it was not, ever."

"There was significant racism and discrimination against Chinese Americans historically, which continue today many years after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act," Chao said on Monday. "In fact, those behind these attacks against me now are likely uncomfortable by the fact that I, a Chinese American woman, am vocal, with my own opinions and don't easily conform to the norm."

The law was called the "Chinese Exclusion Act" for a reason, representatives for Cupertino for All told Patch.

Chao did not properly place the act in its context with other legislation, such as the Page Act of 1875 — which essentially banned Chinese women from entering the country — along with attempts to "deny Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants in particular full membership in American society, including things as simple as being denied the opportunity to give evidence in court," the group said.

Ivan Kuznetsov, a Cupertino parent and the Parent Teacher Student Association treasurer at Hyde Middle School, disagreed with some of Chao’s political positions. But, he added, he has “deep respect for Liang’s energy and dedication, as well as the sheer amount of time she invests to engage with the community, even with those who disagree with her.”

“She asks questions that nobody else dares to ask, and is leading an open conversation about sensitive topics with respect and well-articulated, fact-based arguments,” Kuznetsov said.

Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San Jose) responded to Chao's comments on Twitter. “Those who want to revise the past and pretend racism doesn’t exist are the first [to] accuse [people] of not ‘understanding’ history,” he said.

“Big yikes,” Lee added. “Especially coming from a Chinese American elected [official], this is a gross & irresponsible distortion of history.”