在美国历史中沉浮的“亚裔美国人”

‘The Making of Asian America,’ by Erika Lee
在美国历史中沉浮的“亚裔美国人”

Early in Erika lee’s sweeping “The Making of Asian America: A History” she suggests that Asian-Americans constantly cycle between being labeled “good Asians” versus “bad Asians,” depending on the shifting and often contradictory politics behind their immigration and settlement. We were a “despised ­minority” when Asian immigrants threatened 19th- and early-20th-century white labor, yet since the Cold War we’ve been described as a “model minority,” valorizing the promise of American meritocracy. The capricious ease with which those labels get swapped highlights how our precarious social position rests on our perceived utility: as cheap labor, as anti-­Communist soldiers, as overachievers meant to ­success-shame other communities of ­color. In doing all of this “work,” Lee argues, Asian-­Americans have redefined not only immigration politics and racial categories but also “the very essence of what it means to be ­American.”

在李漪莲(Erika Lee)的《亚裔美国人的故事》(The Making of Asian America: A History)是一本内容详尽的著作，全书开头，她认为亚裔美国人不断在被标注为 “好亚洲人”和“坏亚洲人”之间循环。这取决于移民与定居背后，不断变化而且通常是自相矛盾的政治。当19世纪到20世纪初，亚洲移民威胁到白人劳工时，我们是“被人看不起的少数族裔”。然而到了冷战期间，我们又被描述为“模范少数族裔”，以便稳定美国学术界精英的信心。这种标签变换的随意性，显示出我们不可靠的社会地位是怎样取决于我们在人们心目中的功能：廉价劳工、反共斗士、 乃至令所有其他肤色的社区都相形见绌的超级优秀学生。李漪莲认为，亚裔美国人在做这些“工作”的同时，不仅重新定义了移民政治与种族类别，也重新定义了“身为美国人的真正本质。”

Lee’s comprehensive history traces the experiences of myriad Asian-­American communities, from Chinese laborers in 1850s California to Hmong refugees in 1980s Minnesota. Lee is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, and she makes extensive use of both secondary and primary sources to collect the stories that go into the book. In that regard, “The Making of Asian America” shares strong similarities with other broad, inclusive Asian-American histories, most obviously Ronald Takaki’s “Strangers From a Different Shore,” first published in 1989. Lee’s book doesn’t radically depart from its predecessors so much as provide a useful and important upgrade by broadening the scope and, at times, deepening the investigations.

李漪莲撰写的这部综合史追溯了多个亚裔美国社区的经历，从19世纪50年代加利福尼亚的中国劳工，到20世纪80年代明尼苏达州的苗族难民。 李漪莲是明尼苏达州立大学历史系教授，她广泛运用了二手材料与原始材料去收集各种故事，最后收录在书中。因此《亚裔美国人的故事》和其他详实充分，内容广泛的亚裔美国人历史书有着很大相似之处，特别是高木罗纳(Ronald Takaki)1989年的著作《异岸来的陌生人》(Strangers From a Different Shore)。和前人的著作相比，李漪莲的书并没有激进的偏离之处，只是拓宽了视界，有时也深化了调研，进一步提供了实用且重要的信息。

Case in point: One of her most fascinating chapters, “Border Crossings and Border Enforcement,” delves into the little-​known but remarkable stories of how tens of thousands of Chinese and Japanese found ways into the United States despite being legally barred from immigrating. During what Lee calls an “exclusion era,” which began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, intrepid emigrants would hide in rail cars crossing in from Canada and Mexico or stow away on boats from Cuba and Jamaica. Trafficking Asians into the United States became a lucrative, multiethnic affair for numerous Greek, Italian, indigenous Canadian and Mexican smugglers. Some went so far as to disguise their clients as other races to throw off border agents. Lee cites a 1904 Buffalo newspaper story on how traffickers along the Canadian border routinely disguised Chinese as Native Americans, “dressed in ‘Indian garb’ and carrying baskets of ­sassafras.”

举例来说，“穿越边界与边界执法”是全书最精彩的篇章之一。这一章里，她深入研究了数万中国人与日本人如何千方百计，以违法的方式移民美国，这些故事鲜为人知，但却极为重要。在李漪莲看来，《1882年排华法案》标志着“排外主义时代”的开始，而勇敢的移民会藏在火车车厢里，从加拿大和墨西哥进入美国；或是躲在船里，从古巴和牙买加进入美国。运送亚洲人进入美国成了涉及不同种族，利润丰厚的买卖，不少希腊人、意大利人都参与进来、还有土生土长的加拿大人和墨西哥蛇头。有些人甚至把自己的客户伪装成其他种族，骗过边界岗哨。李漪莲引用1904年巴法罗城报纸上的故事，一个加拿大边境上的蛇头经常把中国人伪装成印第安人，“给他们穿上‘印第安服装’，让他们拿着装满树皮的篮子。”

Importantly, Lee notes that as the “first immigrants to be excluded from the United States, Asians became the first undocumented immigrants”; as such, they were also the target of the first of many national panics around so-called illegal immigration. Government officials in the 1900s designated special deportation agents as “Chinese catchers,” while lawmakers in the 1920s bemoaned how even an imagined “Chinese wall” along the Mexico border would fail to “permit a permanent solution.” (The parallels between the anti-Asian immigration hysteria of yesteryear and the current climate facing Latino immigrants are both obvious and instructive.)

重要的是，李漪莲指出，“第一代移民在美国遭到排斥的同时，亚洲人成了第一批无正式文件的移民”；当时美国国内有许多恐慌，首当其冲的就是所谓的非法移民，于是亚洲人也就成了众矢之的。20世纪的第一个10年里，政府官员们把驱逐非法移民出境的特工称为“中国捕手”。20年代的立法者们则哀叹，就算在墨西哥边境树立一道“中国墙”，也不能“带来永久的解决方案”（这和不久前反对亚洲移民的歇斯底里，以及当前拉丁美洲移民面对的环境显然非常相似，颇为发人深省）。

These border dramas serve as a reminder that the span of Asian-American history is really cleaved into two distinct parts, thanks to the exclusion era that deliberately barred specific Asian groups from the United States. Those pernicious immigration laws marked a nadir in domestic sentiment toward Asian-­Americans, largely because of both nativist and white working-class agitation. It would take mounting international pressure in the 20th century to help reverse the tide, beginning with World War II and the need to enlist China in the war against Japan (all while Japanese-American citizens were being forced into internment camps). Then came the Cold War and “hot” conflicts in Korea and Southeast Asia, which created all manner of new Asian allies and enemies. Add in the momentum of the civil rights movement, and the turning point finally came with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

这些边界上的戏剧性事件提醒人们，在那个排外的时代里，有些特定的亚裔族群被美国故意拒之门外，因此亚裔美国人的历史其实可以分为两部分。那些引起巨大伤害的移民法，标志着国内对亚裔美国人的感情降低到最低点，主要是因为本土主义者和白人劳工阶层的煽动。 20世纪不断增长的国际压力才扭转了这股趋势，先是“二战”期间，需要让中国在战争中对抗日本（与此同时，国内的日裔美国人则被送入拘留营）。其后，“冷战”以及朝鲜和东南亚之间的“热战”造成了各种全新的亚洲盟友与敌人。再加上民权运动的影响，转折点最终随《1965年移民与国籍法》(Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965)的通过而到来。

That legislation ended what was effectively a 40-year moratorium on immigration dating back to the highly restrictive 1924 Immigration Act. It has since facilitated the legal entry of tens of millions of new immigrants, but even its most ardent backers comically underestimated the 1965 act’s potential. When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law, he declared that it repealed earlier policies that were “un-American in the highest sense,” but he also reassured the public that the bill “does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.” Lee coolly retorts, “The president would be proven wrong,” and she argues that by producing “a racial restructuring of U.S. society, and every sector,” the 1965 act “changed the course of Asian-American and U.S. history.”

1924年的《移民法案》对移民做出了极大限制，相当于在实质上中止了移民行为，1965年的法案结束了长达40年的这种状况。自那以后，它帮助数千万新移民合法地进入美国，但就连它最热心的支持者也可笑地低估了它的潜力。签署这项法案，使之成为法律的林敦・B・约翰逊(Lyndon B. Johnson)总统宣布，它否定了那些“在最高意义上违背美国精神”的早期政策，但也安抚公众说，这项法案“不会影响到百万公众的生活。它不会重塑我们日常生活的结构。”李漪莲冷酷地反驳道，“总统被证明是错的，”她指出，1965年的法案“在美国社会乃至各个领域内实现种族重组”，从而“改变了亚裔美国人与美国历史的进程。”

The act certainly changed the course of my own family’s history. Its provisions helped my parents gain permanent resident status after arriving from Taiwan as graduate students in 1968. That status allowed them to use the act’s “family reunification” preference to sponsor their siblings, who in turn could do the same for their families. I spent the 1980s growing up with a California coterie of second-generation kids of Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Indian descent; I came to think of us as “post-’65ers.” As a result, when I read the key Asian-American histories of Ronald Takaki and Sucheng Chan ― a canon that I suspect Erika Lee will soon join ― I marvel at their insights into pre-’65 Asian America, but I’ve never been as satisfied with their examinations of the community’s post-’65 transformations.

这项法案无疑改变了我的家族史。1968年，我的父母作为台湾的大学毕业生，根据该法案中的条款获得美国的永久居民身份。而这个身份又让他们可以根据法案中的“家庭团聚”优先权，担保他们的兄弟姊妹来到美国，这些人又可以担保其他的家族成员来美国。80年代，我在加利福尼亚，和不少中国、台湾、韩国、越南与印度的第二代移民孩子一起长大，形成了一个小小团体；我觉得我们是“65后”的一代。所以，读到高木罗纳与陈素贞等人创作的重要亚裔美国人历史时（我认为李漪莲的作品很快也会进入这些经典的行列），他们对1965年之前的亚裔美国人的深刻洞见固然令我激赏，但他们对1965年后社区变化的研究却从未让我满意。

That’s not for any inherent scholarly shortcomings on their part, least of all in Lee’s robust work. Her post-’65 chapters chronicle the tremendous new diversity and complexities within a polyglot community made up of 24 distinct ethnic groups, with vast disparities in income and education among them. As someone who lives and teaches in Minnesota, Lee devotes a substantial chapter to the challenges facing Hmong refugees, tens of thousands of whom were resettled there by the American government after the end of the Vietnam War. She also discusses the importance of the Asian-American movement of the late 1960s and ’70s that produced the very concept of “Asian America,” and she ends the book by highlighting key examples of how contemporary Asian-Americans have mobilized themselves politically.

这并不是因为他们的著作有什么内在的学术缺陷，李漪莲这部有力的著作中尤其没有问题。这本书中，关于1965年后的篇章里，她描写了一个由24个不同族裔团体组成的多语言社区中，全新的、巨大的多样化与复杂性，其中收入水平和教育水平也千差万别。李漪莲在明尼苏达州生活和教学，她用一整章描写那里的苗族难民所面临的挑战――越南战争后，数万名苗族难民被美国政府重新安置在那里。她还讨论了60年代末到70年代亚裔美国运动的重要性，正是它产生了“亚裔美国人”这个概念，本书最后，她特别举了几个当代亚裔美国人积极参与政治的关键例子。

Still, Lee’s overall history, like its predecessors, places a heavy emphasis on the external political and economic forces by which Asians have been welcomed in and warded off, recruited and excluded, labeled “good” and “bad.” These are sensible, necessary ways of explaining the making of Asian-Americans as both a racial and national community. But whenever these histories engage the post-’65 present, I find myself wanting to know more about the making of “Asian-­American-ness,” i.e. the internal, intra-community ways we’ve defined our place, our worth, our identities and cultures.

和前辈们一样，李漪莲的综合历史极为强调外部政治与经济力量的作用，由于这些力量，亚洲人有时被欢迎，有时被排挤；有时被接纳，有时被驱逐；有时被贴上“好”的标签，有时被贴上“坏”的标签。这些是合情合理，有必要的方式，可以解释亚裔美国人作为种族与民族社区是如何形成的。但是这些历史一旦与1965年后的现实发生接触，我就觉得还想知道更多关于“亚裔美国性”方面的东西，换言之，就是我们在社区内部如何定义自己的位置、自己的价值，自己的身份与文化。

Of course, the wry paradox is that the 1965 act made this work infinitely more difficult because this community is being continually transformed by new immigrants for whom “Asian America” has no meaning beyond a demographic check box. In that regard, the making of both Asian America and Asian-American-ness is constantly reset as well, creating new questions for historians in some indeterminate future to investigate.

当然，扭曲的悖论是，1965年的法案让这项工作变得无比艰难，因为这个社区还在持续受新移民影响而发生变化，对于这些新移民来说，人口统计表格上的复选框之上写的“亚裔美国人”并没有什么特别的含义。因此，“亚裔美国人”与“亚裔美国性”都在不断重新形成，不断为历史学家们造成各种新问题，供他们在不确定的未来某时进行研究。