Make America Learn History Again: San Francisco and the Bubonic Plague
Make America Learn History Again: San Francisco and the Bubonic Plague
It’s real history, force-fed to the “All American Men” in my inbox
On March 6th 1900 the body of a Chinese man, Wong Cha King, was found dead of a mysterious illness in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The plague was already across the Pacific.
I originally wrote this post closer to the start of the COVID pandemic, noting that the racism against Chinese Americans mirrored that of an earlier plague, as hate crimes and discrimination rose against all Asian Americans. It’s an important story, and as I’ve re-edited it to include in my upcoming book, I’m resharing it with you.
“There is no reason to be alarmed. The plague has a strong preference for yellow meat.” A San Francisco newspaper 1900
"It’s the Chinese Virus.” Republicans 2020
Beyond the obvious racism of the political right, there’s a different kind of unintentional racism that surrounds the pandemic and its vaccines, the idea that anyone who distrusts the government and health care is doing so out of a lack of intelligence. I see this idea in liberals that mock minorities who have a distrust of doctors and vaccines. They don’t seem to understand why this would be, and include the minorities in the group of angry white anti-vaxxers whose basis for their ideas seem to be a lack of knowledge and the spread of misinformation. They don’t understand because from their place of privilege their families haven’t been the test subjects. They haven’t been denied medical care. They haven’t been treated differently, violently, by the government or health care officials.
It’s easy to write off all anti-vaccine sentiments as being the behavior of unintelligent enraged assholes, but, historically there’s been more legitimate reasons for a fear of vaccines. This is only one of those stories.
If these stories are meaningful to you, please subscribe to support me. I’m funded by all of you. Subscriptions are only $5 a month and you get bonus posts only my paid subscribers can see.
(As a reminder I do not know these men. They are messaging a satirical Facebook profile of me as a conservative.)
Trust me, you don’t want to read his whole nonsensical spiel.
Scientists eventually discovered the plague was not inherent to Chinese people after all. In fact, the fleas on the diseased rats were Northern European rat fleas. These fleas, which eject less bacteria than the fleas in Asia, were the reason the plague didn’t spread as fast in America. That didn’t stop racists from continuing to blame the problem on Chinese immigrants and continuing to mistreat them.
Given that in Honolulu racism against the Chinese had resulted in the area they lived in being burned, it’s not surprising that the Chinese in San Francisco were already weary of the health inspectors. This skepticism led to the people hiding the bodies of their dead or otherwise trying to fool the health inspectors, further propagating the plague. Had racism not caused the government to act violently towards the Chinese, had it not caused some scientists to refuse to acknowledge the plague was spread by rats, how many lives could have been saved?
A few decades later, in 1924, the plague showed up in California again. This time in a neighborhood of mostly Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, prompting the quarantine of them and the mass firing of Hispanic employees regardless of whether or not they lived in the infected area. Mirroring the sentiment towards the Chinese, the white residents declared it was because the Mexicans were inherently dirty.
With all the gross medical neglect, being used as test subjects, being thought of as medically inferior, I can never judge someone whose ancestors went through that for their fear of vaccines. If we are going to make strides towards changing those ideas, we need to approach them understanding why these attitudes came to be. Understanding they didn’t come from a lack of intellect. We need to teach this history.
Sources:
Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague David K Randall
That Rotten Spot Science and Industry Institute
Fighting Bubonic Plague Guenter Risse
Plague in San Francisco (1900) Brian Dolan
I’m working on updating my posts to be ready to publish in a book. Do you want your name listed in my book as a supporter? My $100 yearly subscribers will all be listed in my book. It takes time to create these, and although I wish I had endless amounts of time to spend on my passions, we all have to make money to survive. If I’m not making money on this, then I need to increase my work outside of this, and that leaves less time for telling history. When you subscribe you’re helping me support my family and helping me get closer to my dream of this being my job again. (If you’re new to following me, at one point I was monetized on Facebook enough to have it be my sole job, AND even enough to be able to donate a portion of page profits to domestic violence shelters and then later donations of period products. I hope to get back to this someday, but I’m just nowhere close.)
You can also subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year. I appreciate all of you
As always, I would appreciate you heart reacting this post for me. More engagement means more people might see my work. ♥️
As I mentioned at the start, this story is only one story of the government and our health care system mistreating minorities. Here are more, and these too only represent a portion of their history:
I can’t tell you how many times I thought I accidentally typed plaque instead of plague while rereading my post before publishing. Those sassy words are too similar.
Amazing read. My favourite line from Johnny was “the Roman Empire never fell, it just went underground” 😂😂😂.