The Tacoma Method and the Chinese reconciliation effort

By Andrew Hamlin
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Screening, “Of Race and Reconciliation” (Photo from KBTC facebook)

“Of Race and Reconciliation,” an hour-long documentary produced by Tacoma’s KBTC television station and currently available on the station’s website, comes well-directed, well-assembled, well-written, and well-polished. The camera plays over historical photographs and documents. Historians recount who said and did what, when, and to whom. The stage is set. The action runs smoothly.

But the essential ugliness of that action leaves a spiritual splat in the center of things that no polish can squeegee away. The documentary centers on the expulsion of Chinese people from Tacoma in early November 1885, 131 years ago this month. The Chinese in America had suffered, at the hands of the federal government when the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. This was an expulsion so systematic, so complete, that to this day, Tacoma has no place it calls Chinatown.

And the Chinese in Tacoma had suffered, specifically, before November 1885. But this action saw entire families driven from their homes, their possessions burned. It was the pinnacle of stoked, mounting racism — yet the relative lack of bloodshed and harm earned praise from elsewhere in America. “The Tacoma Method” seemed like a self-satisfying way to get rid of Chinese without messy violence.

Today, the Chinese Reconciliation Park stands in Tacoma as a greeting to Chinese visitors and Chinese residents, and as a memorial to the wrongs of the past. My only criticism of the documentary is that it devotes only a few minutes at its end to the issue of reconciliation and peacemaking and an educational statement to prevent all this from happening again. Certainly, these are tough topics, especially in our trying times.

Could all this happen again? I would like to say no, but that would not be an honest answer. The web page for the documentary includes a link to a New York Times article on Jesse Watters, whose stereotype-ridden ambush-style interviews of folks in New York City’s Chinatown aired on Fox News, sparking a protest outside the network’s offices. That was only last month.

And of course, by the time you’re reading this, you will know whether we elected a certain man for president. A man who’s pledged, with millions watching, to persecute people based on their religion. Based on their race. Based on their opposition to him.

But history sometimes shows us at our worst. There’s at least a chance that the United States will make that kind of history. In which case, we’ll need reconciliation after the hard times, assuming we survive. We’ll need the kind of lessons this film provides. We’ll need a way towards reconciliation. We may find the clues—for our hearts and our marching feet—here.

To watch KBTC’s “On Race and Reconciliation,” visit kbtc.org/page.php?id=1849.

Andrew can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.