Michael Luo
Appearances
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah. When I think about vulnerability, I sometimes think about the age old, tell me about yourself question. So when I think about that question, tell me about yourself, I instinctively think about my secondary characteristics, like my title and my job, my ethnic background as a Chinese American, where I live, where I grew up.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
But when I think about it some more, it doesn't really answer, tell me about yourself. It doesn't allow people to get to know me and who I am. It says something about my superficial characteristics and some parts of the life I've lived, but doesn't really give people a feel of who I am.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Whereas if I tell people instead that I love to host events, not just finding humans less scary, but in general, because I love to see people happy and to bring something new to the table, something exciting. I'm also a very sensitive person who gets hurt easily, but also shows that I'm very perceptive and sharp.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
if I give those descriptors instead, it may allow people to get a better sense of who I am, not just the formal title, job, and where I've lived.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, I think I was sensitive from the very beginning. I remember in middle school, I was forced by my mother to order at McDonald's and I froze up. I was stuttering and I started crying in front of the female cashier at McDonald's and I couldn't even finish my order. It was a big moment. But really, I recognize now that it is like that feebleness and that fear
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
human nature of being insecure that people actually gravitate towards. It's not really me being perfect or me being an MD or me having these accolades. It's actually my feebleness that people are drawn towards. It's like a strength now.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yes, my social anxiety absolutely fluctuates. Before this podcast, I was very anxious, about 70% anxious. I didn't eat before this because I figured it might want to come back up. And now that we're doing it, I'm feeling maybe 15% anxious. Yeah, it kind of goes up and down for sure. And actually what helped me before this podcast was imagining David saying, 70%, that's not enough.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Bring it up more.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, for sure.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, I'm welcome. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
That I really don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not really in the right place here. And it doesn't make sense.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, sure. I would love to. So Jacob has always done miraculous work with a lot of teens when it comes to depression and anxiety. And one day he called me thinking about how to take it to the next level and how to help maybe even a bunch of people and scale up all at the same time. And through that, we started to host a couple of workshops called Finding Humans Less Scary.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
And that I'm kind of a fraud for trying to host a social anxiety workshop.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
That's the most of it.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
They're probably 35% true.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Maybe like 80 or 90 percent.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I think it would hurt most if it came from Jacob.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I'm available. Okay.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Wow. And what exactly am I a fraud?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, it's true. It's definitely unusual for a psychiatry resident to help people with social anxiety in a huge pro bono situation. manner where we're inviting 100 people from the community. It's definitely odd, eccentric, unfamiliar. At the same time, I'm a level three team CBT clinician. This is what I do. This is why I practice psychiatry, because psychiatry, I think, is outdated.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
And what team has brought me is nothing short of
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
miracles and happiness it's just something that i want to share i don't really care actually if you judge me that you think i'm a fraud or not i don't really care because people come people get relief euphoric and i'm just here for a good time so i don't really care what you say okay who won i felt like i won that one big or small i felt like pretty big big or huge i felt huge Huge. How awesome.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
It is a social anxiety workshop held on the weekend. This weekend, it will be March 29th and March 30th from 930 to 530 p.m. all day. And it's a great place for people to really get out of their comfort zone and try a lot of social behavioral techniques and learn from the master himself, Jacob Towery.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
And how did you get to huge? I loved my counterattack. I think that was good.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
The most hurtful, yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Thank you. I almost think of David as the grandmaster and then Jacob as the master and I'm the pupil. So there are like lineages to this. Awesome.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Oh, yeah, David, could you please?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Wow, that sounds really scary. I surely hope that I don't know everything about what I'm talking about. I really think it's important for me to have a learner mindset. I'm here for a good time, the behavioral training. I'm here to fail on my face and make a huge mess of it on stage in front of an audience. I hope I really don't know anything.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
That way people can see how stupid I look and I will grow tremendously from that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I felt like I won that one.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Felt big.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I would say close to huge. It felt pretty good.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, great. So, Michael, I know you're kind of hosting this event. I don't really know why.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Proudly and excitedly, too. Yeah, I don't really think you should be proud or excited because you really have no idea what you're talking about. You don't have that experience.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
You certainly don't know how to teach social anxiety. It wouldn't be a good idea for you to teach. You should let someone else do that because you don't have any experience.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I love that response. I thought that was fantastic.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I kind of felt like the weight of everything just disappeared. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
It's true, David. You are the ultimate expert. Can you be a little bit more specific? What exactly do I not know what I'm talking about?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
You're on the wrong podcast. Yeah, I'm on the wrong podcast. Wow. Well, I'm certainly here. Can you tell me what would be the right podcast for me then? I'm kind of confused.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I felt like it was a redirection.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
It was big.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Big, huge.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I'm feeling pretty comfortable. My anxiety's actually gone to quite little now, now that we've kind of put in the middle of things and things are good. Okay, great.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
So, um, so Rhonda, I just wanted to let you know that you're not in the right place here. You're on the wrong podcast.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Love that. So Rhonda, let me ask you who won that interaction, me or you?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, I agree.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, I agree. This is definitely an extraordinary place to be. I feel very privileged to be here. It's definitely not for everyone's opportunity to be able to sit on a podcast with Jacob and David and Rhonda. I don't really care if I'm not allowed to be here or not. Guess what? I'm actually still here and I'm talking to the listeners of the Feeling Good podcast. So say what you want.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I don't really care. And who won that one? I feel like I won that one and it felt pretty huge. Awesome.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I was ready for that one.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
So on March 29th and March 30th, it will be a super fun and dynamic workshop dedicated to treating social anxiety. If you're someone who is not really sure how to have a deeper conversation and sometimes you struggle with small talk, if you have fear around dating or public speaking, or maybe you're just craving more deeper connections with people...
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
We welcome you to please sign up on the website, fightinghumanslessscary.com. We'd love to have you. Yeah, it will be a miraculously amazing event and results are not guaranteed, but also guaranteed.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I definitely think there is a mindset.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
thank you for that invitation yeah i definitely think there is a mindset switch after three years of working with jacob i think i'm inclined now to see other humans as like me rather than as an other and it really is like a conscious decision it's like a mental switch when i see someone now i try to relate to them how are they similar to me do they have the same suffering as me um
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Rather than like focusing on, oh, they look different from me or they speak differently from me. I'm always looking for commonalities. And that just kind of allowed me to warm up to people quickly. I have so much to thank for Jacob's existence and everything else.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Oh, yeah. So after the event every year, I always have takeaways and I try to practice. This year, I focused a lot on consent, since that was a pretty big part of Finding Humans Less Scary 2. I find that consent is such a genius idea because... Vulnerability is a super great skill to connect with other people, but that consent really helps me balance and allows me to check in.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Is my vulnerability welcome here? Is this a good option? And so I love when Jacob asks, would you like a handshake or would you like a hug? And it gives the option to the other person. It's very honoring.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Hello. Thanks for having us on.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
Yeah, and I think consent even goes past just physical touch. It can even be used for giving a compliment. That's something Jacob also taught me is asking someone instead of love bombing them right away, like, would you like a compliment? And that's like very honoring. Instead of like me going to David, oh, David, you taught me everything I know. You've changed my life. Thank you so much.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
432: Finding Humans Less Scary Marathon Returns! Yay!
I think maybe David might like an invitation first. Like, hey, David, would you like a compliment from me about what you've done for me?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
When I hear these things, there are just so many resonances with this history. And from the kind of populist reaction to immigration, there's a lot of similarities to the kind of... Combination of working class labor, small business owner, this kind of nimbus, I call it, of outrage came from not just laborers, but from this kind of also small business owners.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And so I see the same in the MAGA movement and the way politicians operate. Craven politicians talk about immigrants today as it could be just torn from the 19th century. And the thing I think about when I think about what history can tell us about this moment is it's actually hard when foreign people who speak a different language, look different, you know, come to a society.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And it's hard work to... To not be suspicious, to reach out, to think about them as human beings with families, aspirations, stories. The book is called Strangers in the Land, and I drew that from... a Supreme Court decision that upheld one of the Chinese exclusion laws where the Supreme Court Justice, Justice Field, who wrote this opinion, referred to the Chinese as strangers in the land.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And he kind of talked about how they, by his perception, refused to assimilate, couldn't assimilate with the American people. So in that opinion, it's a derogatory expression. Sure. The Chinese themselves actually, interestingly, early on referred to themselves as strangers. Yeah.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And I'm not exactly sure of how the translation worked, but I found actually in one of those 1849, 1850 period when they were welcomed in San Francisco, they were looking for a white American to be kind of their champion for them. And they said to this person they asked, we need a champion. We are strangers in the land. So that's interesting.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
The thing I say in the book, though, and the thing that I'm interested in trying to convey in the book is the Chinese were strangers then. Asian Americans are in some ways continue to be strangers. But the stranger label applies to many immigrant groups through history, including right now. And I do think that The Stranger label is still there.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Thanks so much for having me, David.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Not much. Actually, that's a great question. For this book, I had a chance to sit down and talk to my parents. And the book spans nearly 200 years and goes back really to the middle of the 19th century and this wave of Chinese migration that preceded my parents. My parents came post-1965.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
They were born in mainland China, fled to Taiwan when the communists came, and came to the United States for graduate school. And so their migration was a different migration than the heart of my book. But this history relates to their history. And this post-1965 migration kind of ends my book.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Yeah. The moment that set me on the path to this book is something that happened to me in the fall of 2016. It was in some ways a... a typical moment that many Asian Americans have experienced. Um, but it was also felt, it just left a really deep impression on me.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
It was a Sunday afternoon after church, a group of friends of ours, we were standing on a block on the Upper East Side and an annoyed woman, kind of just annoyed that we were blocking the sidewalk, brushed past and muttered, go back to China. And what happened in this particular moment was, um, I kind of abandoned my daughter in the stroller and went and ran after her.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And we kind of had this exchange on the street where she yelled, go back to your effing country. And in the adrenaline-filled moment, I kind of sputtered, I was born in this country. And we went back inside the restaurant. I tweeted about the moment. And it turned into this viral thing. And I ended up writing an open letter to this woman. For the New York Times. For the New York Times.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And it kind of generated almost like a week of conversation about Asian Americans and their place in the kind of – racial milieu of the United States. This was the fall of 2016, just before Trumpism had been elected. You kind of felt this curtain of nativism descending. Obviously, it's been a lot has happened since then. So that moment, what I wrote about in that open letter was about this kind of
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
sense of otherizing that a lot of Asian Americans have experienced, this kind of perpetual foreigner syndrome that a lot of people talk about. And I was thinking about my kids. And I was born in the United States, and my kids are two generations removed from my parents' immigrant experience.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And I felt this kind of sadness inside me about, will they ever feel like they truly belong here in the United States? And then we had COVID, and then the surge in attacks on Asians during that period, and the Atlanta spa attacks particularly that happened in the spring of 2021. Eight or nine people were killed, I think, mostly Asian American women. It was a white shooter.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And it sparked this kind of moment, an awakening, I think, moment we've since moved on from as a country about anti-Asian violence. And it was in that period I wrote a piece for The New Yorker about this history. I'm an educated person. I'm— reasonably conscious of my Asian American identity. But I didn't know this history that is in this book.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And the thing that really caught my attention was a passage in our history that historians call the driving out, which happened in the 1885, 1886 range, when Nearly 200 communities in the American West physically, violently, in many cases, drove out the Chinese from their communities.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And I wrote about this in this piece, and I talked about how this precarity of the Asian American experience is not new. And that historical exploration from that piece is what set me on, I'm going to write a book about this. Yeah. So, you know, Asian American history is American history.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And I want, you know, all the dads who are reading about, you know, World War II to want to read a book about this, who are interested in Civil War literature, to read about this different racial conflagration that was going on during the Civil War, after the Civil War on the West Coast.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Yeah, the gold rush is where this really begins. It's not exactly clear what exactly was the chain of events specifically of when people in southeastern China and the Pearl River Delta arrived. heard about the gold rush and started to come en masse to the United States. There is this maybe apocryphal, but it's kind of part of the lore that was passed down in the Chinese community.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
There was a story about a merchant who was here apparently 1847-ish, his name was Chung Ming, who'd arrived in America around 1847. And he was among the people who went into the Sierra Nevada foothills with the gold rush. This would have been really early for a Chinese merchant to be in the United States, but that's how the story goes.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And he wrote a letter to a friend back home named Cheng Yam, a fellow villager from the Sanyi district of Guangdong province, about the gold to be had in the minefields. And the story goes that Cheng Yam told others about Cheng Ming's good fortune and set off across the Pacific himself.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
There is a more verifiable fact about a ship that arrived in Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1848 that contained gold dust from California. The Hudson Bay Company, which was a fur trading concern, had requested that British experts in China evaluate it. We also know that there were copies of a Hawaiian newspaper from Honolulu with news about the gold rush.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And so this might have been how word spread. And it was a very specific region in China where people were coming from. This was in the Pearl River Delta. You know, in any kind of story of migration, there's a push and pull. There was... unrest in China. There was the Taiping Rebellion that was going on around this time where millions of people were killed.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Within Guangdong province, there were some internecine conflicts that were going on. But there's also Canton, as it was called back then, or As it's known today, Guangzhou was an important trading port, and there was a lot of exposure to the West.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And, you know, some of these stories that I looked into for this book of this 19th century migration, these people were coming from southern China as teenagers, 13, 14, 15. I have a 16-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old daughter. I cannot imagine... I could not even conceive of the possibility of either of them getting on a boat in steerage weeks on the ocean.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Exactly. And the idea that they were 13-year-olds, 14-year-old boys who are sailing across the ocean and landing on these shores and making a living is just pretty extraordinary.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Yeah. So the other big part of the story that people know about is the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. And that came about a decade later after that initial push. But yes, there was a business class of people who... who welcomed Chinese arrivals because of what they saw that they could do for the state economically. That initial welcome, I think, was relatively short-lived.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And cynical even. Yeah, yeah. And you started to see there are horrific stories in the minefields about – violence against Chinese in the 1850s, 1860s. Things really start to accelerate in the 1870s. And that relates to economics. I mean, there's also all the other factors that relate to bigotry in the United States. It relates to religion. It relates to race.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Yeah. There's a figure named Dennis Carney who is a demagogue-like figure who started to do these speeches, these rallies in San Francisco. This is mid-1870s. Mm-hmm. This is a time when San Francisco was basically a cauldron of unemployed white working men, as they were called. And he would draw thousands and he would end his speeches with this rallying cry, the Chinese must go.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And he started a party called the Working Men's Party that... had basically two principles. It was against kind of corporate power and the robber barons of that era, and it was a very anti-Chinese in its orientation. That was really at the heart of what the Workingmen's Party was.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Yes. I mean, it was in the late 1860s. There was a treaty that was passed in 1868 called the Burlingame Treaty that kind of opened up immigration between the two countries. It was around this time that Frederick Douglass was... barnstorming around northern cities doing paid lectures. And it was in 1867 that he first tested out a speech in Boston on America's composite nationality.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
Douglass called on America to live up to its mission of serving as a, as he called it, a perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family. And he was saying that America was unique. He said, all the way from black to white with intermediate shades, which in the apocalyptic vision, no man can number. And he was saying that we had a chance to be a
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
you know, a model for the world. And then he talked about the Chinese. And he explicitly talked about this, quote, new race that is making its appearance within our borders and claiming attention. And he predicted that at some point in the future, the Chinese population would number in the millions. And he predicted just urged Americans, his fellow Americans, to embrace these new arrivals.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
And he has this kind of stirring admonition for Americans about Chinese immigration. Do you ask if I favor such immigration? I answer I would. And then he's asking this kind of series of rhetorical questions. Would you have them naturalized and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
I would. And he talks about how this comes from his belief in basic human rights, the right of locomotion, the right of migration, the right which belongs to no particular race but belongs alike to all and to all alike. And his hope was for the Chinese to feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. It really is inspirational.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
I don't get too much into this in the book, but there actually is a little bit of a rivalry tension between black Americans and Chinese. And there is this aspect of some black Americans were kind of saying, well, we're actually higher on the hierarchy. We're Christian. We're actually American. We're born here. Go back generations. These are foreigners. They're heathens.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Historical Epic of the Chinese in America
There is an aspect of that, but Frederick Douglass... He wouldn't put up with it. No, he has a clarion voice and, you know, a very rare voice defending the Chinese.