San Francisco formally apologized for the city’s history of racist and discriminatory policies against the Chinese American and immigrant communities.
In a resolution passed unanimously by its board of supervisors on Tuesday, the city apologized to Chinese immigrants and their descendants “for past atrocities,” including an over 150-year history of “systemic and institutional racism, xenophobia and discrimination.”
“The Chinese community in San Francisco has a deep and rich history but we have to acknowledge the harmful wrongs that our city has committed against this community,” Supervisor Matt Haney, who introduced the resolution, said in a release. “Although many of these injustices occurred long ago, it’s clear this discrimination continues to happen today.”
The apology “will not erase what has been done,” the city official noted, “but is a necessary step for us to address the continued violence and discrimination that the Chinese community is still experiencing.”
The substance of the resolution was brought to Haney’s attention by three current and former San Francisco public school students: Lowell High School senior Dennis Casey Wu; University of California, Berkeley, junior Drew Min; and Stanford University sophomore George Tilton-Low.
San Francisco’s formal apology follows similar resolutions by the cities of Antioch, San Jose and Los Angeles in the last year.
The text of the resolution walks through a long series of discriminatory laws targeting Chinese residents in the city in the 19th century, blocking them from equal access to education, job opportunities and housing — and links this history to ongoing racism, discrimination and hate that Asian Americans face today.
“The recent rise in anti-Asian violence and racial discrimination demonstrates that xenophobia remains deeply rooted in our society and should be understood and contextualized within our history,” the resolution states.
The resolution notes that in 1870, a decade after the state barred Asian students from going to school with white students, the city then closed Chinese schools, effectively blocking the community’s children from education for over a decade. That same year, a new city law barred anyone of Chinese descent from government work.
From 1873-1883, the board of supervisors passed over a dozen ordinances targeting laundries run by Chinese Americans and immigrants, criminalizing common practices and zoning them to the outskirts of the city. A riot in 1877 targeted the Chinese American community and led to four deaths and 20 Chinese-owned laundries being wrecked. And in 1890, an ordinance made it illegal for Chinese Americans and immigrants to live in the city, relegating them to an area on the city’s outer fringes.
The new resolution links this history to the rise in anti-Asian violence amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying: “Chinese residents have been shamefully targeted and scapegoated, in similar ways as they have throughout history.”
Across the U.S., anti-Asian hate crimes have risen dramatically since 2020. A coalition of Asian American advocacy groups called Stop AAPI Hate recorded an alarming 6,600 reports of racist violence against Asian Americans from March 2020 through March 2021, with nearly 40% of the reported attacks in California.
In San Francisco, police data shows skyrocketing hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, from eight such crimes reported in 2019 and nine in 2020 up to 60 reported in 2021.
More than one-third of San Francisco’s nearly 900,000 residents are of Asian descent, with Chinese Americans making up the largest share. San Francisco’s Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in the country.
While the resolution pledged to “rectify the lingering consequences of the discriminatory policies” of the city’s past and “provide for redress and restoration,” it did not provide specifics. Haney, who authored the resolution, gathered with leaders of the AAPI community in Chinatown on Wednesday to call for more financial investment from the city’s budget into Asian and Pacific Islander neighborhoods and institutions.
“An apology is not enough unless it’s met with real action and budget solutions that will truly benefit the community,” Justin Hoover, executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America, said in a statement.