the assignment is about the article i uploaded and the requirement also.

Re-evaluating the ‘alternative’ role of ethnic media in the US: the case of Chinese-language press and working-class women readers

Yu Shi PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY AT HARRISBURG

With millions of immigrants still seeking a place in contemporary American society, the foreign-language media that serve immigrants’ needs have signi- ficantly increased their presence since the civil rights movements in the 1960s and the relaxation of US immigration legislation in 1965. New American Media (formerly New California Media), an association of over 700 ethnic media organizations, reports (2005) that ethnic media now reach 51 million adults, which is about a quarter of the entire US adult population; among the 51 million, 29 million prefer ethnic media to mainstream media.

In particular, this study focuses on the Chinese-language press that serves about 1.3 million foreign-born Chinese in the US (US Bureau of Census, 2000) as well as some second- and third-generation Chinese Americans. The Chinese-language press in the US traces its origin to two publications: Golden Hill News started in San Francisco in 1854 and the Oriental in 1856 (Miller, 1987: 27–8). The press flourished after the turn of the 20th century with publications often siding with different political parties in China. Yet it was the independent newspapers such as the Chinese Times and the Chinese Pacific Weekly that succeeded, due to their non-partisan perspectives and focus on immigrant communities (Zhao, 2006). Recent official numbers are scarce, but Ma reported in 1999 that there were already 40 Chinese-language press titles in the US reaching about 1 million readers.

A considerable amount of research has been done on ethnic media in general and the Chinese-language press in particular. Yet, in many studies (Hayes, 2006; Jeffres, 1999; Lin and Song, 2006; Lum, 1991; Renz, 2006; Sun, 2006; Zhou and Cai, 2002), ethnic media and the Chinese-language press are often treated as homogeneous categories. Differences between

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various ethnic media outlets often disappear – or are not interpreted – under scholars’ broad brush approach, which hopes to paint a general picture of the media’s role in immigrants’ assimilation or acculturation processes. Chinese- language newspapers in the US, however, differ in their origin, history, ownership, production process, circulation pattern, discursive mission, connection to political and commercial interests in local and transnational settings, etc. Similar differences exist within the broad categories of Spanish- language media, Native-American media and African-American media. These differences have strong implications for how an ethnic outlet constructs its messages, and how it influences the identities and practices of its readers. I will elaborate on this criticism later.

Similarly, immigrant audience groups are frequently imagined as homoge- neous. The audience’s differences in gender consciousness, class status, religious beliefs, racial/ethnic identities, etc. shape how they interpret meanings out of media materials and how they weave the meanings into the fabric of their daily lives. To get an in-depth understanding of ethnic media’s role in immigrants’ lives, it is inadequate to take only a functional approach toward media content or to look at the audience through a macro lens. It is also necessary to study on a micro, cultural level the meaning-making processes of the audience with refer- ence to their particular racial, gender, class and religious backgrounds. The goal of this approach is not to answer the question of whether ethnic media facilitate or hinder assimilation, but to understand how their discourses enable or disable cultural politics in the audience’s everyday contexts. Specifically, this study examines the role of major Chinese-language newspapers in the lives of Chinese immigrant working-class women in the San Francisco Bay area.

The San Francisco Bay Area hosts 500,000 Chinese immigrants (US Bureau of Census, 2002). Many newly arrived Chinese, especially women, work in the area as cheap laborers. They work in labor-intensive, low-paying industries, such as the electronics and garment industries (Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1983; Hossfeld, 1994). They are also ghettoized in hotel, restaurant and domestic service jobs, and in a mix of mass-production, subcontracting and family-type firms (Lowe, 1996). These women struggle at the bottom of the capitalist labor market and are marginalized in the national cultural domain as the racialized and gendered ‘Other’. Yet their ‘Othered’ position has yet to qualify them as a special audience group in ethnic media studies. This study intends to extend the research scope of ethnic media studies with a cultural approach and a focus on working-class, female audience members, whose unique social position can test the limits and promises of Chinese-language press in the US.

Media, identities and societies

This research sees media as an ideological state apparatus (Althusser, 1971: 142) that incorporates all people in society within a dominant ideology and secures the hegemony of dominant groups through the process of ‘interpellation’

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(1971: 174). Media discourses draw individuals to interpret their daily actuali- ties with the alienated constructs of power and to subordinate their experienced world to the categories of ruling. In other words, it is mainly through discourses that an individual becomes, acts and speaks in a way that the economic and the state apparatuses prefer (Smith, 1987, 1990). Anderson (1983), for instance, indicates that early in history newspapers and novels unified citizens under the ‘imagined community’ of the nation-state. Lowe (1996: 173) argues that novels are primary agents that prescribe gender roles, ‘naturalize’ immigrants into ‘citizens’, or otherwise ‘discipline’ them as ‘aliens’. Also, contemporary repre- sentations in network television, according to Gray (2000), produce discourses that aim at containing blacks. Yet, it is mainstream media discourses that these scholars are criticizing. What is the relation of ethnic media to the mainstream ideological apparatus? Are they alternative? Are they part of that apparatus? These questions, I argue, have to be answered in reference to, among many fac- tors, the media’s ownership, self-declared mission, positions on particular issues and actual influences on a specific audience group. The current landscape of eth- nic media is very complex and dynamic. We can no longer develop arguments without considering the historical, political, economic and cultural characteris- tics of various ethnic media outlets that determine their discursive nature and influence. Before discussing the history and growth of the Chinese press in the US, let me briefly review the previous research on the functions of ethnic media in immigrants’ lives.

Ethnic media and Chinese-language press in literature

Ethnic media are often regarded as media by and for ethnics in a host coun- try with content in ethnic languages (Hayes, 2006; Jeffres, 1999; Johnson, 2000; Lum, 1991; Ojo, 2006; Park, 1970 [1922]; Renz, 2006; Riggins, 1992a; Viswanath and Arora, 2000). The assumption is that ethnic media are pro- duced by ethnic communities in the host country to serve ethnics’ cultural, political, economic and everyday needs. This assumption is only partially true given the fact that many ethnic outlets are transnationalized or transnational- izing, i.e. their materials are in part produced by their parent outlets in home countries rather than by immigrant communities themselves in host countries. Their presence in the US is largely the result of narrowcasting or diasporic marketing. This assumption is further challenged by the social differences between ethnic media’s personnel and their audience members in terms of class, gender, income, education, etc. It is questionable to what extent the edi- tors, producers and writers can speak for the audience, especially in a com- mercial outlet where the personnel often has close connections to elites and advertisers in both local and transnational settings.

The current landscape of ethnic media displays a much more complicated pic- ture. In relation to ethnic press, it showcases publications by ethnic communities

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bordering on newsletters and fliers; US-based titles that achieve a national pres- ence, such as Cherokee Phoenix for Native Americans and Ebony for African Americans; diasporic editions of transnationally produced and circulated news- papers, such as Sing Tao Daily for Chinese immigrants; publications partially or entirely owned by mainstream corporations to crack the burgeoning ethnic mar- ket, such as Hoy for Hispanics. Some ethnic media submit themselves to main- stream takeover (BET and La Opinión); but some resist mainstream ownership (Ebony and Jet). Some of those that were started by ethnic groups to serve as their social advocate might still stand by their activist position; yet the majority struggle to balance their roles as ethnic representatives and commercial opera- tions (the New York Amsterdam News and the Philadelphia New Observer). They change their discursive positions depending on the issue under discussion. They also grow over time from serving a small audience to a multi-million dollar enterprise (Univisión). Given this picture, I argue that a single word ‘ethnic’ can no longer capture the nuances, nor can it be used to predict the media’s influ- ences on ethnic audience members.

A similar argument can be made with regard to the Chinese-language press. The early Chinese press operated on a limited scale, featuring back issues from China and local publications that focused more on China than local Chinese Americans. This was primarily due to the low level of Chinese literacy of early sojourners and a lack of a strong ethnic economy to support newspapers in the enclave (Zhou and Cai, 2002). After the relaxation of immigration legislation in 1965, Chinese immigrants came to the US in large numbers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China, making the ethnic community an attractive market for major media corporations in Asia. Attracted by this diasporic market, Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal arrived in 1969 and 1976 respectively (McCue, 1975; Zhou and Cai, 2002). They have now become the two largest and most influential Chinese dailies in the US. Besides the prominent dailies, community-based weeklies or bi- weeklies also exist, mostly owned by immigrant entrepreneurs with a circu- lation typically between 5000 and 10,000 (Zhou and Cai, 2002). Although a variety of outlets coexist, according to Lin and Song (2006), only multina- tional enterprises can afford to publish dailies, circulate a few hundred thou- sand copies, and therefore achieve a prominent position in Chinese immigrants’ cultural lives.

As mentioned, ‘ethnic media’ and ‘the Chinese-language press’ can no longer be treated as homogeneous categories when we study the vastly dif- ferent ethnic productions and their discursive influences on ethnic audience members. Reference has to be made to their individual place of origin, his- torical evolution, production process, distribution pattern, ownership, self- identity (non-profit or for-profit; alternative or commercial; or in between), and connection to power groups in local and transnational settings. Many pre- vious studies (Georgiou, 2001; Jeffres, 1999; Lin and Song, 2006; Zhou and Cai, 2002) pointed out these differences, but failed to explicate their impacts

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on media discourses and audience interpretations. In light of the above criti- cism of previous studies, this study examines the San Francisco editions of two transnationally circulated commercial newspapers – Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal – in reference to their political and economic features. Meanwhile, the study draws from my interviews with a group of Chinese immigrant women workers in the area to uncover the two newspapers’ dis- cursive influences in the women’s everyday lives.

Research techniques

Rather than studying the newspapers and the readers separately, I examined the interaction between the papers’ discourses and the readers’ discourses. I relied on the women to choose which newspapers to analyse. Unsurprisingly, they picked the two prominent newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area: Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal. I examined the two publications’ entries in a one-year period (July 2003 to July 2004), with a focus on the sto- ries collected by the women. Our interviews revolved around the women’s comments and reactions to the stories. In short, this study looked at the exact moment of audience interpretation and therefore was able to capture the real- life influences of the papers on the participating women.

Specifically, nine women regularly participated in the interview. They are Amy, Annie, Finnie, Halle, Jenny, Lindsay, Sally, Susan, and Shannon.1 All of them are first-generation immigrants. They work in the area as seamstress, nanny, nurse, laundry worker and electronic assembler. Mostly in their 40s and 50s (except two: one is 71 years old and the other 31), the women only have limited English-language ability and are not familiar with American mainstream cultures. Their annual incomes range from $10,000 to $30,000.

Our interviews – either individual or group interview given the women’s preference – revolved around their interpretations of certain news stories that they perceived as having an influence on their identities and practices. The interviews were very informal, conducted in Mandarin, and recorded upon the women’s consent. The recordings were later transcribed and translated into English in order to write this article.

Meanwhile, I analysed 146 stories from the newspapers, among which 108 were collected by the women and 38 by me.2 The stories were divided into different topical categories, i.e. race, ethnicity, gender, class and culture, which pertain to the identity axes of the women. The stories were then analysed regarding their use of language, selection of sources, social contexts, positions on important issues, common themes and discursive connections with one another. The newspapers’ discourses were further interpreted in ref- erence to the papers’ ownership, place of origin, self-declared mission and distribution pattern. These structural features of the newspapers are the topic of the following section.

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Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal

Rather than a newspaper produced by local Chinese communities in the Bay Area, Sing Tao Daily is one of the four major publications of Sing Tao Newspaper Group Limited, a company that headquarters in Hong Kong. The company has nine overseas bureaus, and circulates in over 100 cities around the world. It arrived in San Francisco in 1969 and now has a daily circula- tion of 250,000 in the US (Engel, 2002). The version that my participants read every day is only one of the 16 diasporic editions that the nine bureaus produce. Each edition targets a Chinese diaspora group of a particular place. Its mission is to ‘help Chinese, including new immigrants, understand more of the American culture in ways that will enhance their quality of life and their ability to solve problems’ (Sing Tao Daily, n.d. a). Sing Tao Daily has recently made the decision ‘to refresh its image and editorial content by positioning itself as the newspaper of choice for the middle class [author’s emphasis], who demand a more high-brow content’ (Sing Tao Daily, n.d. b). Lower-class Chinese immigrants do not seem to be part of the newspaper’s ‘target audience’.

The World Journal speaks from a similar middle-class position. It is another major Chinese-language newspaper in the US, with a daily circula- tion of 200,000 (Engel, 2002). It belongs to the United Daily News Group, a leading transnational media conglomerate based in Taiwan. The group owns more than 12 publications and produces six editions of the World Journal globally. It seeks to attract a diasporic audience, who, according to the newspaper, are highly educated, affluent and have ‘the greatest purchas- ing power’ (World Journal, n.d.). Its mission is to help overseas Chinese ‘bridge the gap to mainstream America’ and ‘improve their quality of life’ (World Journal, n.d.).

The content of the two newspapers mainly comes from three sources: (1) news or information about home cities/countries directly transmitted from their headquarters in Hong Kong and Taiwan; (2) US national and local news and current affairs syndicated from the Associated Press, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, etc.; and (3) news about Chinese dias- poric communities worldwide produced and shared by the newspapers’ overseas bureaus in major hosting cities (Lin and Song, 2006; Zhou and Cai, 2002).

As commercial operations, these two newspapers’ ultimate goal has always been to sell the immigrant market to transnational and ethnic adver- tisers and to bring profit to their owners. Within this context, I argue in the following sections that the newspapers have both liberating and paralyzing influences on Chinese immigrant working-class women’s identities and practices. Their commercial nature sets limits to how alternative they could be on race, class and gender-related issues that are prominent to the women’s daily lives.

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Positive influences of the ethnic newspapers

A basic role of the two newspapers is to provide information and entertain- ment to the women, the majority of whom only had an elementary or junior- high level of education in China and have limited English proficiency.

As my participant Susan commented, the newspapers ‘present the whole world in front of us in our familiar language’. The women have their own favorite sections in the newspapers. Shannon loves the ‘Living USA’ section of Sing Tao Daily. She explained, ‘They have articles on healthy cuisines, like those that help lower cholesterol or blood sugar. We old people need this.’ Annie, the only one in the group who finished high school, enjoys reading essays and prose that she regards as ‘a source of advice on dealing with real- life problems’. Amy, on the other hand, enjoys the ‘Entertainment’ section of the World Journal. She explained: ‘This is my way of staying away from all the troubles and worries in my life.’ Obviously, what these women are look- ing for in the newspapers is not just ‘news’, but also a view of life that is larger than their daily experiences, which can protect them spiritually from being consumed by the back-breaking routines and the suffocating pressure of survival.

Also, with a primary focus on ‘hometowns’, ‘home cultures’ and Chinese ethnics worldwide, the newspapers satisfy the women’s ‘epistephilic desire’, in Naficy’s words (1993), to keep up to date about current events, issues, fash- ions and people's mentalities back home. As Sinclair et al. (2000) contend, the ethnic media are special in that they provide direct information about ‘home right now’. They hold symbolic cultural values and link individuals’ sense of self to the geographic place of ‘home’. This explains why my participant, Amy, felt that the news and information about ‘home’ has a healing power.

Apart from individual identities, community is also imagined through shared readings of ethnic newspapers. The World Journal’s and Sing Tao Daily’s coverage on Mainland China’s success in launching its first manned spacecraft in October 2003 is a good example. The newspapers acclaimed this event as ‘a glory of every person of Chinese origin’, ‘a cornerstone of Chinese history’ and ‘the demarcation of Mainland China’s entry into the international league of superpowers’. Such language appeals to the national sentiment of immigrant readers and bridges their differences in dialect, customs, place of origin or residence, and political ideology. My participants described this event as ‘something to be proud of’. Amy admitted that she cried at the news. Susan quoted the lyrics of a Chinese pop song to describe her feelings: ‘The western dress cannot conceal my Chinese heart.’

Information about US society and local ethnic communities are equally important. Stories that my participants found helpful include those on changes in immigration laws, health and insurance services for immigrants, employment opportunities, career training programs and English classes for new arrivals, and education for the second-generation.

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Many studies have confirmed the above arguments that ethnic media play an important role in preserving ethnic cultures, maintaining individ- ual and collective ethnic identities, and providing crucial information about hosting societies for immigrants (Bai, 2005; Georgiou, 2001; Jeffres, 2000; Lin and Song, 2006; Park, 1970 [1922]; Subervi-Velez, 1986; Zhou and Cai, 2002; Zubrzycki, 1958). Meanwhile, another role of ethnic media, which has been widely recognized and acclaimed, is their role as a watch- dog against mainstream injustice and advocate for minority rights in the US. They are often seen as ‘alternative’ to mainstream media and as hav- ing the power to organize collective actions among minority people (Bai, 2005; Hardt, 1989; Lin and Song, 2006; Ojo, 2006; Riggins, 1992a; Viswanath and Arora, 2000).

Similarly, my fieldwork revealed the dissenting views and the mobilizing power of the two Chinese-language newspapers, particularly on the issues of race, ethnicity, and racism. In general, the newspapers are able to enrich their readers’ interpretive repertoire on these issues, consolidate their sense of ethnic fellowship, and help them make informed decisions on some political initiatives that directly influence their well-being.

A good example is the newspapers’ stories on the arrest of Captain James Yee in September, 2003. The World Journal’s edition on 19 October 2003, detailed:

U.S. Army Captain James Yee, who counseled Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay, is arrested and charged with mishandling classified documents. The original charges against Yee also included espionage, treason, and not following orders. So far, finding no evidence, the military has to remove these charges. Chinese- American civil rights activists point out that Yee’s case bears a shocking resem- blance to the case of Lee Wen-Ho, a Chinese-American scientist.

Lee, formerly employed by a Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, was arrested in December 1999 for espionage and selling nuclear secrets to China. Lacking evidence, the case finally went nowhere and Lee was released after nine months in detention. The World Journal highlighted the resemblance between these two cases and pointed out that although Yee is a third-generation Chinese immigrant, highly Americanized, fluent in English and a graduate of West Point, his loyalty to the US was still doubted.

Sing Tao Daily had a similar report. Both newspapers related the arrest of Yee to that of Lee Wen-Ho, cited ethnic activists and used language with strong ethnic appeals. Their reports connected my participants’ real-life expe- riences of racism to similar experiences of other Chinese immigrants. Through the news discourse, the women came to understand racism not only as the specificities of their personal lives, but also as a social concept and a characteristic of US society. For one of our group interviews on a Sunday afternoon, the news stories opened the floodgates of the women’s personal recollections of racism.

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In reaction to the news reports, Annie banged her fist on the table: ‘The Chinese? Better not to do anything wrong! One mistake puts the whole group into deep deep deep trouble.… With an Asian face, you already look suspicious and you’d better behave!’

Lindsay echoed: ‘There are Chinese people who are real spies. The problem is white Americans see all of us as spies. They don’t believe we could be loyal American citizens.’

‘Yeah, we are ALL bad,’ Shannon complained.

Lindsay continued: ‘So if we make a teeny-tiny mistake or an unpopular move, they label us “the spy!” They won’t treat us as Americans, not even for the second or third generation. In fact, though we are Americans by law or in name, deep in their hearts, we are not. We are aliens.’

Beyond that group interview, the cases of James Yee and Lee Wen-Ho were mentioned many times by the women in different occasions to set the stage to interpret other racial/ethnic issues. The newspapers made them more percep- tive and eloquent in criticizing racism.

In addition to raising racial/ethnic consciousness, the World Journal and Sing Tao Daily have been actively mobilizing collective actions and helping readers to make informed decisions on certain political initiatives. They develop discursive campaigns to support or criticize upcoming government policies, legislative propositions, or political candidates. A good example is the newspapers’ campaign in October 2003 against Proposition 54 (the ‘Racial Privacy Initiative’) in California. According to a featured report in the 5 October 2003 issue of the World Journal, the proposition would prevent the state of California from using racial classifications in most of its opera- tions. Supporters of the measure argued that this was the first step toward a ‘colorblind’ society. But the newspapers, citing ethnic activists, contended that it would make it difficult for the state to provide services to historically disadvantaged groups and correct racial disparities in American society.

During the two and a half months before the special election ballot, the World Journal published over 30 articles, quoting numerous minority or civil rights organizations/activists to highlight the potential negative impact of the proposition on the Chinese immigrant community. Sing Tao Daily ran a sim- ilar campaign against the proposition during that period. Together, the two newspapers greatly influenced the opinions and voting decisions of my par- ticipants, who often cited the two newspapers and borrowed their political jargons while discussing the proposition.

Annie: ‘They [the newspapers] all said that equality could not be achieved this way. Chinese immigrants and other Asian groups need this classification to get “prefer- ential treatment” so we can one day have the social status enjoyed by white people.’

Shannon commented: ‘Without collecting information on race and ethnicity, how can our [Chinese immigrant] organizations tell whether we are treated equally?’

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Lindsay, one of the long-term immigrants in the group, was more critical: ‘It is naïve to get rid of the idea of race. The concept has been around for hundreds of years in this country. It won’t go away overnight just because suddenly the gov- ernment stops collecting our racial information …’

Besides verbal criticism, most of the interviewed women who were eligible voters joined the 73 percent of the Chinese ethnic voters in California to fail this Proposition. With extensive coverage and in-depth analysis, the two newspapers, in this case, constituted a platform of political mobilization.

The above evidence further confirms the alternative position of ethnic media. Actually, the alterity of ethnic media has been so widely confirmed, accepted and assumed – by scholars from both the quantitative functional and the qualitative cultural traditions – that the word ‘ethnic’ almost instantly indicates ‘alternative’. Such a view, I argue, is only partial. It doesn’t con- sider the differences among various ethnic media outlets, nor does it investi- gate whether the commercial nature of many contemporary ethnic outlets sets limits to their ability to attend to the weak and the poor.

Inability to challenge the logic of racial ranking

Although the Chinese-language newspapers examined here are quick to rally against particular cases of racism, they are unable to challenge the very logic of racial labeling and racial ranking, since they always treat facilitating assim- ilation as their primary goal, as reflected in their mission statements. With a watchful eye on discrimination and a constant use of various racial terms, the two newspapers inadvertently help acculturate immigrants, especially new- comers, into racial/ethnic minorities who learn to bear the badge of cultural inferiority in a white, Eurocentric racial hierarchy. My participants didn’t become ‘Chinese Americans’ or ‘minorities’ until they moved here. They learn to take on these identity labels and to live the labels’ denoted and con- noted cultural meanings through interpersonal interactions and, more impor- tantly, through the discursive work of the Chinese-language media that they treat as a cultural authority.

The concepts of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘minority’ and ‘Chinese American’ are the products of countless racial projects in American history. The Chinese- language newspapers, in their effort to participate in a discursive dialogue with the mainstream society and help immigrants assimilate, pick up the iden- tity labels prescribed by the dominant ideology and pass them on to the minority readers without consciously questioning the cultural meanings of these labels. As alternative as they are often believed to be, the newspapers ironically subject immigrants to the mainstream control. Constantakis-Valdes (1992) and Riggins (1992b) share this criticism of the assimilation function of ethnic media.

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Finnie was the newest immigrant among my participants. At first, when- ever we went out for lunch or shopping, she felt excited at seeing any yellow- skinned, dark-eyed people in the Bay Area. She felt that, like her, they were all Chinese. The concepts of ‘Chinese Americans’, ‘Asian Americans’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ had yet to register in her mind. She didn’t realize that, despite the physical resemblance, the people she identified as ‘Chinese’ may hold different passports, come from different Asian countries and vary in their degree of American-ness.

As I observed in the following months, however, she gradually learned the racial wording, primarily through Chinese-language media. In the newspaper stories that she collected, she underlined the term ‘minority’ or ‘ethnic minor- ity’ six times, ‘Chinese Americans’ and ‘Asian Americans’ twice respectively, and ‘race’ and ‘racial discrimination’ combined eleven times. Also, in our later interviews, these terms frequently appeared in her narratives. By engag- ing the racial wording in the ethnic media, she became a ‘Chinese American’ and ‘ethnic minority’ in American society.

To apply Lacan’s idea of the ‘mirror phase’ of identity development (as cited in Hall, 1995: 607), immigrants in a new, unfamiliar society are like infants. They need to look into ‘the mirror of the other’s look’ to complete their identity (re)construction process. The Chinese-language newspapers function as such a mirror through their attempt to facilitate assimilation. Within the newspapers, my participants find out how they are perceived and represented by others and how they are expected to perceive and represent themselves. In other words, the ethnic newspapers are disempowering because they interpellate their readers to take up the racial/ethnic identities as a condition of social recognition and acceptance.

An article from Sing Tao Daily can further illustrate the above argument. The article was titled ‘Pay Attention to How You Dress in the US’ in the newspaper’s 4 January 2004 issue. It reminded immigrant readers of ‘the mainstream cultural norms’. For instance, you need to match the color of your socks to that of your shoes. On the other hand, wearing white socks with black shoes, as some Chinese new arrivals often do, is considered tacky.

From one perspective, this article informs immigrants of existing social codes, which my participants regarded as ‘things we need to know’ to reduce the chances of encountering discrimination. From another perspective, how- ever, the article also ends up legitimizing cultural hierarchy and perpetuating racial/ethnic ranking. It delivers a clear message to my participants that they are inferior and subject to censorship from the white supremacist mainstream. With shattered self-esteem and difficult material lives, my participants, as working-class immigrant women, often find no alternatives other than accom- modating these social rules and submitting themselves to the racist cultural hierarchy. I still remember Annie’s remark:

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We’d better to change ourselves a little.… [Otherwise] people would look at me curiously. They would stop and stand there looking, whispering among themselves, observing me, as if I was a freak. I had such experiences before. At that moment I felt a chill down my back, anxious but also afraid to know why they were looking. I would do anything to avoid going through that again.

What this article didn’t convey is that this racist cultural hierarchy makes ref- erences not only to the women’s cultural customs and daily practices, but also to their physical characteristics, which they cannot change and therefore limit how assimilated they can be. Assimilation is a myth, especially for immigrant workers who are still confined to ethnic employment in Chinatowns and lack the financial and cultural capital to achieve an assimilated appearance. Providing advice on assimilation is necessary. Yet, I believe that the newspa- pers are misleading, particularly to lower-class Chinese immigrants, by paint- ing assimilation as an achievable goal. Their uncritical teaching of dominant cultural rules can make working-class immigrants feel forever secondary.

Such a discursive consequence is not surprising if we consider the com- mercial nature of the two newspapers. Their interest in profit sets limits to how dissenting they want and need to be. Protesting against local cases of racism can achieve two goals for the transnationally produced newspapers: tapping into the concerns of the local immigrant readers in the US and con- solidating a collective ethnic identity that guarantees the papers a pool of loyal readers in the long run. Even so, according to Lin and Song’s analysis of the entire Chinese press in California (2006), only 3 percent of the total stories are regularly dedicated to local issues concerning the immigrant com- munity, in comparison to 44 percent on issues and events in the home coun- try. Operating under a commercial logic, Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal are naturally less motivated to get deep into the racial politics of the US society if they can maintain their wide circulation mainly by selling news that is copied directly from their home editions. In addition, as more and more ethnic publications seek to attract mainstream advertisers, as New American Media (n.d.) reflects, I predict that the ethnic press will be even less willing to stir up racial trouble in the host society.

Promoting assimilation is also conducive to the newspapers’ commercial orientation. Assimilation is related to certain looks, lifestyles, choices of entertainment and the idea of upward mobility. It encourages spending and investing, which benefits both mainstream and ethnic businesses. Fox (1996), Husband (1994) and Johnson (2000) have made similar observations with regard to Latino media, which, according to them, construct a type of Latino- ness that is framed in consumption. The above discussion leads back to my earlier argument that the ethnic media and ethnic press should not be treated as internally homogeneous, or as absolutely alternative to mainstream media. Their structural, political and economic features set conditions on how alter- native they can and want to be on a given issue.

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Similarly, the ethnic audience should no longer be regarded as internally homogeneous. By focusing on a special group within the Chinese immigrant population, namely working-class women, this study is able to reveal another discursive limit of the two Chinese-language dailies.

Inattention to intra-ethnic class and gender conflicts

The commercial nature of the two newspapers also limits their ability to address the class and gender conflicts within the Chinese community in the US. Working-class women’s concerns and issues are often overlooked in the papers since, from a commercial perspective, they don’t belong to the Chinese immigrant majority that has the purchasing power and thus attracts advertisers and news publishers.

Racism is just one issue that Chinese immigrant working-class women have to grapple with. As immigrant wives and mothers, they have to negotiate material difficulty and complicated gender relations in immigrant families. First, ethnic employment defines their class identities. They usually have to work in Chinese-owned businesses before they can improve their English and get jobs outside the ethnic community. Most of my participants worked or work for eth- nic businesses.3 Limited opportunities have submitted them to harsh exploitation at the hands of their co-ethnics. All the participants agreed that long hours, haz- ardous environments, low wages and limited or no access to health insurance are the common conditions in Chinese-owned businesses.

During the year (July 2003 to July 2004) I spent in the Bay Area, however, no more than eight entries in Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal combined directly dealt with disputes between Chinese employers and workers. Even when a labor dispute was covered, such as in an article in the World Journal, titled ‘San Francisco GNT Garment Factory Withholds Workers’ Salaries’ (7 August 2003), individual Chinese business owners were often singled out as bad apples while their illegal practices were never described as common among ethnic businesses. As Green (1996) puts it, it is the exploitation of female immigrant workers within the ethnic group that has permitted the eth- nic businessman to be successful. Yet the ethnic newspapers don’t regard this internal class tension as an urgent issue facing the Chinese community.

Since issues of race and ethnicity have always been prioritized, the partic- ipating women tend to perceive race and ethnicity as central to their identi- ties, leading them to feel sympathy or even gratitude toward their employers on the basis of ethnic solidarity.

‘It is not easy for a Chinese to run a business in the US’, Amy commented.

Shannon asked: ‘If Chinese people in the US didn’t have these greedy and harsh bosses offering jobs, how could they possibly make a living?’

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‘I have a lot of coworkers who are young mothers struggling to work and care for their babies at the same time. My boss understands the situation,’ Susan remarked.

Of course, these comments have to be understood within the racial context of US society, which has made race and ethnicity significant issues to the women. Yet it is largely the Chinese-language newspapers that construct such an ideology that values ethnic fellowship more than workers’ rights, making it more difficult for the women to negotiate with their co-ethnic employers. Downing (1992) made a similar observation with regard to the Spanish- language media in the New York area, which prioritize information from and about home countries over the everyday struggles of working-class Hispanics in the region.

Gender conflicts, patriarchal dominance and domestic violence are also visible problems in Chinese immigrant families. However, they do not get the attention they deserve in the Chinese-language newspapers. During the time I spent in the Bay Area, only six articles in Sing Tao Daily and the World Journal combined directly addressed gender-related issues within immigrant families, all of which focused on domestic violence. As my participants reflected and as I observed, domestic violence is only one of the issues that influence their gender relationships and family lives. Other issues include immigrant husbands’ control of their wives’ immigration status; immigrant women’s pressure to provide for their families; and the prevalence of some traditional patriarchal values in both the family and the community. For example, Sally traded her marriage for her husband’s promise to bring her parents and sister to the US, an agreement that added to his patriarchal power. With this power, he got away with abusing her for years. Similarly, Amy put up with domestic abuse and kept it to herself just to keep her family intact. For her, family offers material and spiritual relief, albeit limited, in this racially hostile host society. Thus, issues of economic survival, immigration status, racial/ethnic discrimination, and patriarchal control often interlock and influence the women’s gender roles and family lives in complicated ways. However, such a complicated situation is not adequately represented or analysed in the Chinese-language newspapers.

While reporting on domestic violence, the newspapers often blame the pressure that the society imposes on immigrant men to provide for their fam- ilies. Few reports openly criticize traditional Chinese patriarchal values, which have subordinated Chinese women in various ways and have proven to be a corrupt element of Chinese cultures. Few reports make the effort to tease out the contributing factors listed above. I am not arguing that patriarchal val- ues are unique to Chinese cultures and traditions. Yet, in an immigrant setting, these values – including strong family orientation, female chastity and self- sacrifice, and filial piety (Ebrey, 2003) – are often praised as virtues of ‘the Chinese culture’, which differentiates itself from ‘the materialistic and promiscuous American culture’.

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In order to construct a collective Chinese identity for immigrants, an iden- tity that guarantees a stable pool of readers, the newspapers often overlook or consciously avoid dealing with the internal differences and conflicts of the Chinese immigrant community. They fail to communicate to Chinese women workers that gender issues are as important as race and ethnicity. They fail to convey to the whole community that ethnic solidarity should not be built by sacrificing immigrant women workers’ interests and rights.

Many factors contribute to the newspapers’ discursive negligence of class and gender conflicts within the ethnic community, conflicts that trouble the everyday lives of the women workers. First the commercial nature of the newspapers determines that their primary target audience is the middle and the upper middle-class Chinese immigrants, who have the purchasing power that attracts transnational and local advertisers. For instance, the newspapers’ assimilation discourse speaks more to the upper middle class, who have both the financial ability and the desire to achieve an assimilated image (Ong, 1999). As Zhou and Cai (2002) explain, ethnic media largely generate their revenue from advertising sales. Businesses can exercise pressure through their allocation of advertising, making media outlets pay more attention to their potential consumers. Thus it is difficult for working-class women to get attention and have a voice in the commercial ethnic newspapers.

In addition, as Kwong (1997) contends, the Chinese-language press is closely connected to elite members of the ethnic community: landlords, busi- ness owners and kinship association leaders, who are often the employers of immigrant women workers. The press is less likely to wash the dirty laundry of the elites in public or to report conflicts that may threaten the elites’ ruling power within the community. Therefore, if a labor dispute erupts, the press is less likely to side with women workers. Moreover, to openly talk about women’s issues, the press may challenge domestic patriarchy, shatter the community’s image, and threaten its moral solidarity, as Abraham contends (2000: 12). Viswanath and Arora (1997) made a similar observation of the Indian ethnic press. They found that the press adapted itself well to its ambiguous roles, covering conflicts that could be interesting to the readers but paying less attention to conflicts that may threaten the stability of the ethnic community.

Finally, in their attempt to appeal to a mass audience, the Chinese-language press operates with what Moran (2006) calls the ‘lowest common denomina- tor approach’, i.e. covering stories that most people, despite their gender, class, religious and ideological differences, can relate to, often at the expense of providing information and analysis that reflect the diversity within the ethnic community. One difference that has been neutralized in the newspapers is the ideological and historical divide between the communist China and the capitalist Taiwan. Just as the newspapers stopped polarizing mainlanders and Taiwanese, they won’t polarize ethnic workers and ethnic employers, or immigrant women and men. For the newspapers, relying on a common

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denominator, namely the stories primarily from and about home countries/ regions, is an approach more conducive to their commercial interest than reporting local incidents that reveal internal conflicts.

The interstitial space of commercial Chinese-language press and its implication for the concept of alterity

The above analysis indicates that the commercial newspapers speak from an interstitial space between the mainstream society and the Chinese commu- nity, as well as between different groups of Chinese immigrants. They may empower their readers to fight against mainstream racism, but meanwhile dis- empower them from developing an alternative consciousness in relation to internal gender and class oppression. As commercial operations rather than community advocates, their influences are ambiguous, especially for those marginalized within the community. They have dissenting views, but they don’t function as activists in mainstream and communal politics. They protest racial injustice but fail to challenge the very logic of racial ranking. They con- solidate ethnic fellowship but often neglect issues crucial to the weak and the poor. They are not part of the ruling ideological apparatus of the mainstream society but they subject their readers to the mainstream racial hierarchy through their promotion of assimilation. For Chinese working-class immi- grant women, they constitute a micro-cosmic ideological apparatus within the ethnic community.

The interstitial position and the ambiguous influences of the two Chinese- language newspapers remind us that ‘ethnic press’ or ‘ethnic media’ in general should not be interpreted solely in opposition to mainstream media. Within this rapidly changing media landscape, being ethnic does not necessarily equal being alternative. Many scholars acclaim the alternative role of ethnic media and their contribution to American democracy. However, this acclaim results either from some scholars’ focus (Hardt, 1989; Ojo, 2006; Riggins, 1992a; Viswanath and Arora, 2000) on the traditional, community-based and often non-commercial ethnic media (where the observation holds true), or from some scholars’ homogeneous view of ‘ethnic media’ (Bai, 2005; Deuze, 2006; Hayes, 2006; Meiss and Tait, 2006; Renz, 2006; Zhou and Cai, 2002) and their failure to consider the implications of the changing political economy of many ethnic media outlets. In this day and age, many ethnic media outlets are part of multinational media corporations or are themselves nation-wide businesses that have close connections to the mainstream media. Although community- based, non-profit media still exist, it is the media giants that enjoy high ratings or wide circulations and thus exert a strong influence on audience members. As many ethnic outlets evolve into, or connect with, big commercial enterprises, they often lose their alternative edge. For instance, Daniels (2006) finds that

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many independent Native American publications defer to stories written by the larger staffs of mainstream media. This duplication of content will result in a duplication of opinions in the long run. As for the Spanish-language media, Sinclair (1999: 94) observes that ‘Spanish-language television is on a continuum with mainstream television and an integral part of the television industry in the USA, not a marginal alternative for a socially alienated minority’. A similar evaluation is suitable for the prominent Chinese-language newspapers analysed in this study.

In other words, ethnic media should not be treated as the ‘Other’ of main- stream media, but as a complex and changing system of its own, with inter- nal differences in history, ownership, self-identity, production process, distribution pattern, degree of involvement with mainstream media and so on. Their alterity should be re-evaluated against all these factors and put into relative terms, i.e. alternative to what, for whose interest, on what issues and to what extent. As this study illustrates, the two commercial Chinese- language newspapers are alternative to mainstream racial discrimination, but only to a certain extent. They don’t advocate for working-class women against male ethnic elites. Their alternative energy is channeled toward fight- ing mainstream racism but not toward correcting internal class and gender inequalities. Their ambiguous discursive position casts both liberating and paralyzing influences on Chinese immigrant women workers’ self-identities and daily practices.

Finally, the discursive positions of individual ethnic media outlets are always changing, as mainstream corporations take over or invest in successful ethnic outlets, as some ethnic outlets themselves adopt the commercial model in face of competition, and as transnational media giants increase their influence in diasporic communities. The question of diversity in content and opinion, which is often raised to criticize the concentrated mainstream media system, should be asked in studies of the ethnic media system or systems as well.

Notes

1. They picked these English names to replace their real names in this article. 2. The goal of this study was to test the discursive strengths and limits of the

Chinese-language press from an immigrant, working-class, women’s perspective. Thus it focused primarily on the women’s collection of news stories. They collected articles that they regarded as important to their lives. My collections were only sup- plementary, including 1) follow-up stories of the women’s collection; and 2) front- page news, feature stories, and in-depth reports that were closely related to the women’s collection.

3. Eight out of the 9 women have past or current experiences of working in ethnic businesses: 4 in garment shops, 2 under domestic service companies (one is a nanny and the other is a nurse), 1 in an electronics factory, and 1 in a laundry. Of the rest one is a new arrival and about to start sewing at home.

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Yu Shi is an assistant professor of communication and humanities at Penn State University – Harrisburg. Her research revolves around media cultural criticism, media globalization, corporate cultural imperialism, audience groups in developing countries and immigrant women workers in the US. Address: Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg – School of Humanities, 777 West Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, Pennsylvania 17057, USA. [email: [email protected]; [email protected]]

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