We Did Contribute To This Nation. And Still Do...

"If it weren't for the Chinese we could not be building this railroad."
I have heard too many times to ignore European-Americans voicing that Asian-Americans aren't really American because they didn't contribute to the building of this country.

Here's just one piece of evidence that this is a mistaken assumption ingrained from lies presented as truth seeped in insidiously by self-serving propagandists.


Here's is evidence of Asian-American contribution in the building of America:

The Transcontinental Railroad. Starting around 1865, approximately 11,000 Chinese men were recruited in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, mustered into work-gangs at the docks, and then ferried to the California Sierras to shovel and haul away dirt and rock. As the railroad magnate Leland Stanford wrote at the time, "If it weren't for the Chinese we could not be building this railroad."

From the PBS special Becoming American: The Chinese Experience

Words from a key maker of the railroad that connected the expanse of this nation. This is just the broad sweep of it. To know the details of the brutal conditions of this work is to really know just how much of a contribution was made. An intimate story of one of these individuals needs to be told.