Chopsticks in the Delta
Rex Nelson, Arkansas
Democrat Gazette Editorial, p. 15 2/12/2011
Following
a recent column that mentioned Lake Village grocer Joe Dan Yee and discussed
the history of Chinese immigration into the Delta regions of Arkansas and
Mississippi, I was contacted by a writer named John Jung.
“Until recently, I
had never even been to the Delta,” Jung writes at a blog that focuses on the
Delta Chinese. “So why my sudden involvement? As a Chinese who was born and
raised until age 15 in Georgia, I suppose you might consider me a cousin of
sorts of Mississippi Chinese. However, almost every Mississippi Delta Chinese I
know or have heard about from the last century comes from a grocery store
family, whereas I grew up in a Chinese laundry. My hometown had only one
Chinese family, namely ours, and so I had never even heard of a Chinese grocer
or a Chinese restaurant.”
In
2005, Jung wrote a memoir, “Southern Fried Rice: Life in a Chinese Laundry in
the Deep South.” He was speaking about the book during a 2007 meeting of the
Chinese Historical Society of Southern California when a member of the audience
stood up. His name was Roland Chow, and he had grown up in a Delta Chinese
grocery. He said that Jung should write a history of Chinese in the
Delta.
“I was rather hesitant to
take on such a task since I knew nothing about grocery store life or even Delta
life,” Jung says. “But over time, as I studied previous research and read oral
histories, I became fascinated with the unique situation that Chinese in the
Delta faced and how they managed to survive and eventually prosper under
difficult circumstances.”
The result was the
2008 book, “Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta
Chinese Grocers.”
“In the course of
this undertaking, I had the opportunity to meet many Delta Chinese, some living
there still, as well as others living elsewhere, mostly California and Texas,”
Jung writes. “Currently there is growing enthusiasm and recognition of the
necessity and value of expanding these efforts to record the Delta Chinese
history before it is too late.”
Efforts have begun
to create a museum in Cleveland, Miss. It’s a joint project by Delta State
University, the city of Cleveland and Delta Chinese organizations to present a
history of the Delta Chinese through interpretive objects, photographs and
more.
“By the time the Chinese
began to come to the Delta in the 1870s, white superiority was already a deeply
rooted aspect of Southern society,” Jung writes in his 2008 book. “Chinese were
regarded as non-white and therefore ‘colored.’ As they were not fluent in the
English language and American values, they were also foreigners and relegated
to a low social status.
“Race relations presented
a delicate situation for the Chinese. They were economically dependent on the
blacks who were the primary customers in most of their stores, but the Chinese
wanted whites to accord them more favorable treatment than that given to
blacks. In other words, Chinese had to walk along a thin line between the black
and white segments of society.
“During the battle
over school desegregation that arose in the 1960s, some Chinese hedged their
bets, making private contributions to both the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People and the white segregationist Citizens Councils.
To be acceptable to whites, they had to distance themselves from blacks. But
being economically dependent on blacks, as well as living in black
neighborhoods, they had to treat blacks better than whites did.”
One interview subject told
Jung, “In the community where we lived, we were quite accepted. But the blacks
considered us as whites. The whites considered us as non-black, but we were
kind of stuck in the middle there.”
Jung was perfectly trained
to delve into the often ambiguous social standing of the Delta Chinese. After
moving to California, he majored in psychology at the University of California
at Berkeley and went on to earn a doctorate from Northwestern University. He’s
a professor of psychology emeritus at California State University at Long Beach
and was the author of several textbooks.
“After a 40-year
career in academia as a professor of psychology entering retirement and with
more time to reflect,” he says, “I returned to a question that I had avoided
many times during my life, namely how do I as a second-generation Chinese
American fit in a predominantly black and white society . . . We were the only
Chinese in town, so it was difficult for me to understand who I was, ethnically
speaking.”
Unlike the Chinese
immigrant populations of large cities such as San Francisco and New York, little
had been written about the Chinese immigrants in the Delta until Jung came
along. Their story deserved to be examined. While a number of the Delta Chinese
moved elsewhere, others such as Yee remain behind, contributing to their
communities.
“By the 1950s,
Chinese and whites generally got along in school, but there was one area where
racial mixing was frowned upon,” Jung writes. “When members of the opposite sex
became romantically involved, negative reactions of both white and Chinese
communities were prevalent in the 1950s and earlier in the Delta. White and
Chinese parents felt that interracial dating and marriages were not
viable.”
It wasn’t always an easy
road for the Chinese to travel in rural Arkansas and Mississippi.
—–––––
•–––––—
Free-lance columnist
Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities