To the Chinese laborer:

I do not know your name, nor do I know your story. I do know, however, that your story is different from mine. Unlike you, I am new to the City of Angels, brought here across a vast expanse of land by a train. You, I assume, were probably brought here across a vast expanse of water by a boat. And yet here you are, giving the sweat of your labor to the railroads that brought me here. Even though our stories are different, they are connected, bound up in a history of race and citizenship, migration and labor. We, unlike those Europeans, do not have a claim to this country. We are the unassimilable masses, the perpetual foreigner and the illegal alien, the brown and yellow hordes that will spoil the purity of the white race. We are not wanted here, except to do the “dirty” work of washing laundry and picking fruit. We are replaceable. When your people were barred from coming to this country, those with money and power decided they needed my people to replace you. But what will happen when they decide to replace me?

Sincerely,
Zerefino Velázquez

Questions:
1. How did the racialization of Latinos and Asians during the late-nineteenth century serve to “whiten" the European immigrant populations? How did the industrial labor regime affect these processes of assimilation (as Americans / as Whites)? How can we read immigration history as a history of race in America?
3. How has the “color line” functioned within Latino and Asian populations? Consider: dark-skinned mestizos and “White Hispanics” (the Census); also Japanese Americans claiming “whiteness” (Ozawa v. United States) but not other Asian groups like Filipinos.