An American story

They didn't drink as much, kept better hours, and seemed more accepting of the job before them--laying miles and miles of track. They gambled a lot, but only with each other. They seemed far more healthy, at least were infirm far less often than the others in part, people say, because to drink their tea they had to boil their water. 

They were the imports, the immigrants, the thousands of railroad workers brought here to cut the railroad's path across the nation, the Central Pacific, men who proved themselves more trustworthy and productive, even over mountains that seemed impossible to cross. They didn't up and leave at the whisper of a gold field. They lived on imported food the rest of the crew wouldn't touch--bamboo shoots and seaweed, rice and dried fish. Amazingly, they worked hard even when they weren't supervised by some foreman. In short, the Chinese railroad workers came factory-equipped with a work ethic that surpassed the white guys. 

What's more, even if sin was available close by, they didn't patronize brothels. They were much sought after by the Central Pacific's top brass, even though elsewhere in the west--maybe especially in California--they were much hated by the white populace. In 1862, when Leland Stanford (yes, he of the famous university) became governor of California, in his inaugural speech he referred to the Chinese as the "dregs of Asia" and argued to get rid of them all.

Chinese women had to be ranked, both here and back home in China, as among "the least of these." In part because of the low ceilings of their opportunities, many became prostitutes, not by choice, but because they were physically forced to do so. Chinese parents literally sold their daughters. Thousands were then "imported" for the sex trade, many contracted to be indentured servants signed into a pact from which they would never be free. 

Twelve thousand Chinese men lived in California in 1852--and a half-dozen women. Twenty years later, the numbers had changed: 65,000 men and 5000 women, nearly all of them prostitutes.

It's not particularly difficult to imagine how it is that one people can so readily shun another when cultural differences are strong and deeply rooted. Plenty of examples can be quite easily unearthed in our national history. 

Division comes easily. Love, not so.