Documentary | DVD
Director: Jennie F. Lew
Producers: Yvonne Y. Lee, Jennie F. Lew
Co-Productions: KPIX 5 San Francisco , Chinese American Citizens Alliance
Ethnicity: Chinese
Subjects: History, Human/Civil Rights, Racism
This documentary gives an in-depth look at the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the effect that it continues to have on generations of Chinese and Chinese Americans. This law was the first exclusion policy officially adopted by the United States government, one of the results of the decades long scapegoating endured by Chinese workers caught in the crossfire of the lethal turn-of-the-century labor political powerplay. Personal stories as well as chilling revelations about INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) procedures give a frame of reference to the archived histories of official documents and images, shedding light on the toll of institutionalized discrimination and racism that remains a century later.