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The City's debt to its Chinese Joseph L .Alioto
I sometimes wonder if San Franciscans appreciate how much they
owe to the Chinese and to Chinatown for the social stability of The City in
recent years.
During the rough period of the urban crisis in America the
late 60s. when one major American city after another was torn apart and transformed
by racial revolution and physical deterioration. The Chinese in San Francisco
were a leading factor in preserving the values of The City while it
accommodated dramatic change. They didn't run anywhere, they stayed put, and
expanded their communities throughout The City.
The Chinese children became and remain the highest achievers
in the public school system: civil service examinations for the best positions
are dominated by the Chinese on bidding for lucrative municipal contracts Chinese
businessmen and their competent Chinese
professional advisers assumed conspicuous roles: and their ownership of
residential properties throughout San Francisco grows remarkably.
Jade Snow Wong ( such a name!) the remarkable and lovely San
Francisco woman. may weil have spun the classic story for future generations of
what Chinatown was all about in her widely read “Fifth Chinese Daughter published
and translated into many foreign languages.
Early in my term as mayor l tried to appoint her to the San Francisco
Board of Education at a time when I thought the Chinese community was headed
for a tough confrontation on the issue of busing their elementary school children
out of Chinatown. Her intense work as a first-rate artist as well as writer and
her preoccupation with rearing her four fine young children led her to decline
but listened to her closely on the subject of educating children.
The Chinese of our day have integrated into every phase of
The City's life. but they insist that they have a right to give their children the
values inherent in their Chinese traditions; and furthermore, that our own
visions are enhanced by the ability to share in a multi cultured society. They
struggled with court-ordered busing and were successful on appeal to a higher
federal court in demonstrating that it was founded on judicial error: but even
before this reversal they had largely won their point by tactics which insured
that their view with little children would prevail.
There was special pride when the touring Chinese
Archeological Finds broke all records in San Francisco And the Chinese New Year
Celebration has come as close to achieving "Mardi Gras" status as anything
in the country.
A far cry from a fabled Dennis Kearney who ran for mayor of
San Francisco on a platform which said simply "The Chinese Must Go" Or
when Go Leland Stanford issued a proclamation that the presence of the Chinese
" degraded and distinct people” that they were. could not but exert a " deleterious
influence upon the superior race. And even Mayor James Phelan, one of the best in our
history.(1897-1902) per-mitted himself to speak in like tenor in testimony
before Congress urging restrictive anti-Chinese legislation.
The Chinese came with
the cry that Gold had been discovered in California. The gold is gone but the Chinese
remain in San Francisco and thank God for that. But for their ability to stay
put and expand and to insist on contributing their own values to our society, The
City would have suffered the racial unbalance that continues to plague many of
the eastern cities. Al this and the color and glamor the Chinese add to the lustre of San Francisco.
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