Recently I read a review of Kevin Starr's new book "Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950-1963." The review prompted me to check out the book from the library, and it was so good and so interesting I had to buy one of my own. As a native Southern Californian born in 1935, I am of an age to remember the years 1950 to 1963 in detail. I started high school in 1950, married in 1955, had babies from 56 to 61 and bought a first house in 1959. There was rarely an event happening in those years talked about in the book that I was not aware of. What I didn't know was the history behind each one.
From time to time I'll be sharing some of the things I learned, or enjoyed reading about, in this book. But one of the reasons I purchased the book is that I needed more time than the library allowed to read and understand about the various racial components of California history, especially about the Philippinos, of which I was totally unaware.
Today's blog really isn't about the book, but it did bring to my mind something I read a couple of years ago in a newspaper and kept in my file of interesting things (yes, I have one of those, among many other strange files). Here's what it said:
“These workers fill the menial positions of our country well.”
“They follow their original national habits in food and mode of life; they have no social intercourse with white people.”
“They are non-assimilative with whites.”
“My observation has been that the laborers who are here now and coming here tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
“They work at what would be starvation prices for white men and women.”
“He comes here as a laborer. He comes here for the purpose of bettering his condition. He comes here as a law-abiding citizen. Where is the white man who will go into that ditch and work? He is not here. You can not find him.”
These quotes are from a hearing of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration and date from 1877. The report is in the National Archives.
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My comment:
It is true that there is no new thing under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
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