Unseen Histories: Chinese Labor, Racial Dynamics, and the Memory of Exploitation in Sinners and Deadwood

Unseen Histories: Chinese Labor, Racial Dynamics, and the Memory of Exploitation in Sinners and Deadwood

The American South has long been defined by its inflexible racial hierarchies, entrenched violence, and deep economic inequality. While records of Black oppression under slavery and Jim Crow laws are foundational to our understanding of this region, Ryan Coogler's film Sinners introduces a lesser-known, yet equally poignant, chapter: the experience of Chinese immigrants. The film does more than highlight a forgotten demographic; it opens a window into how race, labor, and memory intersect in the post-Civil War South, where Chinese workers were viewed as tools to uphold white supremacy once slavery formally ended.

Coogler underscores the precariousness of Chinese labor through scenes where they are treated as fundamentally replaceable. When conflict flares, whether economic, racial, or interpersonal, Chinese workers are shown absorbing consequences without protection; they are tolerated only as long as it serves white economic interests. The film's insistence on this disposability echoes the historical record: Chinese laborers were welcomed as a stopgap workforce after emancipation, then scapegoated, excluded, and pushed out once they were no longer helpful.

In the wake of emancipation, Southern landowners were desperate for cheap labor to maintain their agricultural output without the use of slavery. Chinese immigrants, many of whom had already labored under brutal conditions building the transcontinental railroad, became the next exploitable workforce. White elites imagined Chinese immigrants as a pliable alternative to newly freed Black workers; racially "foreign," politically vulnerable, and less likely (in their view) to organize across the South's racial lines.

This perception of Chinese laborers as "slightly better than Blacks" placed them in a precarious social position. Chinese people were cast as outsiders, but “civilizable," a narrative that gave white bosses a way to use Chinese labor while keeping anti-Black hierarchy intact. In practice, however, this meant being subjected to racial violence, exclusionary laws, and economic exploitation, while being denied even the meager political recognition Black Americans had begun to fight for in Reconstruction.

Historical accounts in the course materials reinforce this pattern, emphasizing how Chinese labor was exploited for significant infrastructure projects and rendered disposable once white labor and political power consolidated. The Anti-Coolie Act of 1862, for example, taxed Chinese workers so heavily that many lost nearly all of their wages, a tactic designed to eliminate their economic viability while profiting off their labor. At the same time, anti-Chinese campaigns like those led by Denis Kearney ("The Chinese Must Go!") equated Chinese presence with a threat to white workers—solidifying a scapegoat narrative that remains recognizable today. Together, these conditions reveal how Chinese immigrants were slotted into a racial system designed to extract labor while limiting belonging.

A central theme in Coogler's film is the liminal racial space Chinese Americans occupied. They were neither white nor Black, not enslaved but not free from systemic oppression. Their presence disrupted the binary racial narrative of the South. While they were sometimes allowed to operate stores or businesses, particularly in rural areas where few alternatives existed, they were never truly accepted into white society. At best, they were tolerated; at worst, they were actively persecuted or erased.

Sociologist Claire Jean Kim's theory of "racial triangulation" is valid here. In her paper, "The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans", Kim argues Asian Americans have been treated as a racial middle: applauded as model workers, but still cast as alien- always “from somewhere else” (Kim, 1999). This framework fits the portrayal of Chinese characters in Sinners, who work hard, face discrimination, and yet are kept at arm's length from both Black communities and the white ruling class. Their labor is necessary, but their humanity is optional.

This echoes patterns highlighted in course materials, where even generations of U.S.-born Asian Americans are still asked, "Where are you really from?" Such questions reinforce the myth that Asians are perpetual foreigners, never fully belonging in the American body politic. Whether in 19th-century Mississippi or 21st-century California, the effect is the same: exclusion cloaked in civility.

To further understand the cultural implications of Sinners, it's helpful to compare it with the character of Mr. Wu in HBO's Deadwood. Set in the American West during the same postbellum era, Mr. Wu is the unofficial leader of Deadwood's small Chinese enclave. He rarely speaks English, is confined to background dealings (often illegal), and communicates through gestures, animals, and expressions like "San Francisco" or "cocksucker." While he becomes an unlikely ally to characters like Al Swearengen, he remains voiceless, both literally and metaphorically.

Mr. Wu's portrayal exemplifies the "invisible laborer" trope. He is essential to the town's economy, yet he is rarely acknowledged as a person with agency. Viewers only “get” Mr. Wu through a white lens, which reduces him to a racial function rather than a character with his own real story.

In contrast, Coogler grants his Chinese characters greater interiority. Though still marginalized, they are allowed moments of personal dignity, frustration, and hope. The film's strength lies in refusing to reduce its Chinese subjects to flat symbols. Instead, they become vessels for exploring how race, labor, and memory collide in the American South, a region often thought of in strictly Black and white terms.

One of the most haunting themes in Sinners is the selective amnesia of American racial memory. Chinese exclusion, forced displacement, and racially motivated massacres, like the 1871 Los Angeles Chinese Massacre or the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, are rarely taught or remembered with the same gravity as other racial injustices. This erasure compounds the trauma, rendering an already marginalized group doubly invisible.

This cultural forgetting contrasts with the "model minority" stereotype often applied to Asian Americans. As stated earlier, even positive stereotypes (such as being innovative, successful, or compliant) function as forms of othering. They silence legitimate grievances and uphold the myth that racism can be overcome through hard work alone. For Chinese Americans who suffered lynching, land theft, and exclusion, this myth is not only false—it's insulting.

The COVID-19 pandemic reignited awareness of anti-Asian hate, but even this has focused more on present-day incidents than the long arc of exclusion and violence. Films like this attempt to fill that gap by spotlighting a community that was used for its labor and then left to fend for itself, stripped of political power, cultural respect, and historical recognition.

The inclusion of Chinese Americans in Southern history and in cultural works like Sinners and Deadwood is not just about correcting the record. It's about challenging the frameworks through which we understand race in America. By showing how Chinese laborers were exploited, positioned as "better than Blacks" but "less than whites," and eventually erased from the story, Coogler reminds us that racial oppression operates in many shades.

Moreover, this history challenges progressive narratives that assume racial inclusion is a straight line. Many Chinese workers came to America believing in its promises. They worked tirelessly, paid taxes, and tried to integrate into society. In return, they were met with exclusion, humiliation, and violence. Only through films, scholarship, and public memory can their stories be reclaimed.

Coogler does what so few filmmakers working with Southern history dare to do: his film centers the Chinese American experience not as a footnote, but as a vital thread in the tapestry of American racial history. Alongside characters like Mr. Wu in Deadwood, the film reveals how Chinese immigrants navigated the dual burdens of racialization and utility, welcomed when useful, cast out when not.

To remember these stories is not to diminish the suffering of others, but to honor the full complexity of our past. The Chinese laborers of the postbellum South were not just economic actors; they were people with dreams, dignity, and stories that deserve to be told. Coogler's film allows us to take a step toward that overdue reckoning. By recovering what American racial memory leaves out, the film also challenges the simplified narratives that still shape who is seen as belonging, who is blamed in moments of economic fear, and whose suffering is treated as historically irrelevant.

Just some food for thought.

The Bastard/ July 2025