February 1897
Dear Diary,
I
wish I could send the following letter, but I could not find the courage to
mail it. It would cause my dear
Mamie far too much pain. But I
will attach it, so that I will never turn into Mr. Tape, even if I become the
man he always wanted Mamie to marry.
Dear Mr. Tape,
I
am writing you to describe to you how upset Mamie is because you and Mrs. Tape
decided not to join us for New Year's last week. Mr. Tape, I understand you were upset by our elopement, but
we only eloped because we knew we would never get your blessing.
There
are many things I have meant to say to you over the years. You have never tried to hide your
disdain for my background so at least I knew who I would be dealing with if I
decided to continue my relationship with Mamie. But I never thought you would distance yourself as you have
these past months. Your hypocrisy
is astounding. You were not born
rich. You made yourself a great
life. Why have you disregarded my
potential so quickly? You are so adamant
about being an American. You value
Americanness so highly. Does my
being born in America mean nothing to you? Yes, I was born in Chinatown. But, though I think you often ignore this, Chinatown is in
America. Though I have never been
to China, I know that we have created here a space that is unlike the villages
and cities back home and different from the towns and cities that dominate the
American landscape. We have
created a unique space for the Chinese inhabitants of San Francisco that I am
proud of. You should be too. I am American. But I am also Chinese. Though it seems as if you cannot grasp
this concept, I am both.
Mamie
has recalled some of her childhood these past weeks, as she has attempted to
create a family in me since you have deserted her. She brought up the story about your attempt to get her into
a white children's school. At
first, I thought this was a story of integration. I was surprised!
I felt a shift in my thinking about you. You were doing something to help our community! But alas, I was wrong. You were trying to distance yourself
from us and show that Mamie and your family should have not been excluded
because you weren't like other Chinese.
As I pondered it, I realized that you could not have produced someone
like Mamie if you hated Chinese people.
You have instilled in her some pride in her heritage, even if you tried
to teach her to suppress it when whites were around. She would have never married me if she had been taught her
whole life that Chinese were not worthy.
So I realized you have been in a position where you have had to
constantly navigate your white life while still maintaining connections to the
Chinese community.
Your
case shows how ambivalent the Chinese middle class has become here in San
Francisco. They don't know how to
balance their class and their race.
They want the perks of being accepted in white society, while
benefitting from the Chinese community as well. They know they are Chinese and don't want to be degraded for
it, yet they degrade other Chinese for being "too" Chinese. Your wife, in an article that Mamie
showed me, wrote "My children don't dress like other Chinese. They look just as phunny amongst them
as the Chinese dress in Chinese look amongst you Caucasians" (55). Here, your wife degrades the way
Chinese dress just because white people do not wear the same clothes. She has made us inferior in her own
mind because we are too Chinese. When
Mamie was reading the article to me, it hurt her to think that her parents felt
Chinese dress was not as worthy as white dress.
And
yet you make all of your money off of us.
Your family prospers because society has created differences between
whites and Chinese. If it hadn't,
the steamship company would have never needed you to transport Chinese
passengers because they would just be passengers. But no, that is not the world we live in. Your company exists because white
Americans have created a world where we are less. I hope one day you will recognize this.
Your
higher class has allowed you to separate yourself as wholly as possible from
most Chinese in the Bay. You class
has allowed you to look down on me and my family, even though we are
hardworking. Even though our
families share similar heritage. You
try to live this white life, but you will never be one of them. Unless you learn to accept us, you will
always be living an in-between life - disdaining us while never being able to
convince them entirely that you aren't like us.
Your son-in-law,
Herman
Photo: The type of dress Mr. Tape would have wanted Herman to wear all the time. Source: http://berkeleyheritage.com/essays/joseph_tape.html
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