Remember to Forget

"... the effect of so much benevolence leads me to beg of you to forget to remember that the barber charges you one dollar for a shave while he humbly submits to the American man a bill of fifteen cents. And murmur no more because your honored elder brother, on a visit to this country is detained . . . he is protected under the wing of the Eagle, the Emblem of Liberty. . . What is the loss of ten hundred years or ten thousand times ten dollars compared with the happiness of knowing oneself so securely sheltered?" (Sui Sin Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, p.870)

This is a passage in the letter that Mrs. Spring Fragrance writes to Mr. Spring Fragrance while she is away on a visit to San Francisco. She is relaying her thoughts after hearing a speech given in San Francisco entitled "America, the Protector of China." (p.870)

This scathingly subversive passage in Mrs. Spring Fragrance is very telling of the experiences that the immigrating Chinese were having at the turn of the century in the U.S. More than that, experiences like these were not uncommon among any group of immigrants during this time in America. People from all over the world were traveling here, trying to find there place in the "land of opportunity" and being met with the same types of discrimination Sui Sin Far details in this letter. Here in San Francisco, a number of ethnic groups passed though the gates of Angel Island. Even more interesting, especially when remembering some of the other authors we've read in class such as DuBois, Sa, and Perkins Gilman, you didn't even have to be an immigrant to experience blatant discrimination by not only other people, but also by the government, by the law itself. There are many similarities to the treatment Far describes and the treatment former slaves received after their emancipation at the hands of corrupt government officials and Jim Crow laws. I found this cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly.

The caption says:

"The Nigger Must Go,"
and
"The Chinese Must Go"
The Poor Barbarians Can't Understand Our Civilized Republican Form Of Government

It's important to remember that discrimination and prejudice is a shared experience around the world and especially one played over and again here in the United States - that we are all a part of a group in one way or another that at one point in time was/is/will be the target of this mistreatment. Its a cycle of assimilation which isn't necessary, but is inevitable because we as a group of people don't take the time to empathize, sympathize or even relate to one another at all.

As a lesbian with a multi-ethnic background, I belong to a number of minority groups, each with their own cultures and agendas. It's particularly hard for me to understand how a group that has experienced discrimination will not automatically aid another group. For example, gay marriage being spoken out against at the pulpits of black churches. Must we take down another group in order to take our place, and if so, do we really want a place in that sort of a societal system? Still, how is it avoided when you are a part of that group?

This is possibly another repercussion of the "double consciousness" that DuBios describes, or rather, another state of this dualistic existence, the individual versus their cultural group. I think that Sin Sun Far really distills the beginning states of assimilation and this double consciousness in this story through Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Mrs. Spring Fragrance is a happy, optimistic immigrant that buys into some of the fairy tale of the "American Dream." She keenly feels both ties to American culture and the traditions dictated by her ethnicity. There seems to be a lot of the author herself in this story, as she creates Mrs. Spring Fragrance to be this contradictory character who seems to be blindly accepting of her circumstances but also hits upon the idea that she isn't quite sold on everything being "'high-class'" in America. (p.872) There is a hint of of sarcasm in that spring fragrance.