I won’t turn my back on Chinatown: Black and Asian people must stand together in Philly

At times, Asians have been weaponized by white Americans who aimed to divide Blacks and Asians by depicting Asians as a “model minority”, contrasting them with Black Americans who, Anglo Americans say, have made scant progress. Such tactics skate over the effects of redlining, inadequate healthcare, the school-to-prison pipeline, and other forms of systemic racism that have long oppressed the Black community.

But I’m not taking the bait to turn my back on Chinatown. When it comes to Blacks and Asians in Philadelphia, our shared histories behoove us to stand together.

The birth of Philly’s Chinatown

The Central Pacific Railroad hired more than 12,000 Chinese men to help build the Transcontinental Railroad from 1863 to 1869. When the railroad was finished, Central Pacific essentially discarded them.

Chinese people fled the Pacific states for the Eastern Seaboard due to violence toward them. In 1871, Lee Fong started a laundry at 913 Race Street, an area considered undesirable at the time. That business became an anchor for the Asian community which grew into Chinatown. White Philadelphians’ rejection of Asians as neighbors forced the latter into an ethnic enclave, according to the history recorded at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Black folks have faced similar isolation.

The destruction of Black Bottoms

Black people have lived in Philadelphia since the 1600s, some of them enslaved, some of them free, including washerwomen who did the same kind of work as Lee Fong. Starting in the early 1900s, the Great Migration brought more people of African heritage to Philadelphia to escape lynching and segregation in the South. Some of them bought or rented homes in what became known as the Black Bottom, a neighborhood that stretched from 33rd to 40th Streets, and from Lancaster to University Avenues.

In the 1950s, the “higher eds and meds”—including the University of Pennsylvania, Presbyterian Hospital, and other institutions—formed the West Philadelphia Corporation (WPC) to clear out Black residents and build University City, writes West Philadelphia Collaborative History.

This history is not unique to our city. In her Avery Review essay “The Emergence and Erasure of Black Urban Landscapes” Detroit landscape architect Ujijji Davis Williams outlines the deliberate destruction of thriving Black communities across the US. Black Bottoms nationwide gave Black people a financial and emotional foothold, but they were sliced and diced by highways and demolition through eminent domain. The Black Bottoms that raised America’s first Black doctors, lawyers, teachers, and small manufacturers were decimated. The bottoms in places like Chicago and Harlem had nurtured the arts, becoming the birthplaces of soul, blues, and ground-breaking literary works.

As a native West Philadelphian who came of age in the 1960s and who attended Calvary Episcopal Church near 41st and Brown Streets, I recall the destruction of the Black Bottom.

The calculated leveling of our communities

Chinatown has suffered similar ravages. In 1932, the city used eminent domain to wipe out homes in Chinatown to build the Broad-Ridge subway spur. Later, the Vine Street Expressway cut through the heart of Chinatown. The Pennsylvania Convention Center and Market East have further devastated our Chinatown, a cultural gem with its restaurants, festivals, and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. Those businesses not only bring tourists but help to keep Philadelphians well.

And now Chinatown is fighting for its life due to a proposed massive arena, which, according to a new study, poses a “significant potential risk to Chinatown’s core identity.”

This misguided project comes as no surprise to Dominic Vitiello, associate professor in Penn’s Department of City and Regional Planning in the Weitzman School of Design and author of “The planned destruction of Chinatowns in the U.S. and Canada”. Vitiello and his co-author Zoe Blickenderfer trace “… the broad patterns and trends of planned and realized destruction … of Chinatowns” in North America.

In Philadelphia, Asians and Blacks have borne the calculated leveling of their communities. That tie binds us.

So, yes, I risked the protest, arthritic body and all, to ask Mayor Parker and City Council to reject the proposed arena. I got rained on, but I rejoiced in having breath enough to lift my voice against one more racist project.

At top: A diverse crowd of thousands of people opposing the proposed Sixers arena marched through Chinatown on September 7, 2024. (Photo by Alaina Johns.)