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Bill Bye!

HONORING AAPI MONTH

What Does Bill Nye Have to Do with the Rise of Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the US??

Did You Know before “Bill Nye The Science Guy” there was another famous Bill Nye; American Humorist and world famous newspaper editor Bill Nye (1850-1896)?

Unlike our Bill, OG Bill Nye borrowed the name from a character in an extremely famous poem of his day; a poem which happens to be about tensions between white and Chinese gold prospectors during the California Gold Rush: Plain Language from Truthful James (1870).

ln the poem, one Chinese and two white prospectors sit down to a card game of Euchre. Bill Nye, one of the white guys, hides cards up his sleeve and tries to cheat the Chinese guy, assuming he’s never played before. But the Chinese guy has some cards up his sleeve too!

Here’s where it gets spicy. The poem was written by Bret Harte (whom history remembers foremost as the lifelong rival of Mark Twain). He intended the poem to satirize resentment and suspicion directed at Chinese immigrants by white Californians. However, the majority of readers took it at face value and “embraced the poem as mocking the Chinese”. Before it’s publication, Harte was such an obscure writer that his other works were originally published without his name. However, if anything sells well in America, racism will!

Originally published in September 1870, it was rapidly republished by every major periodical and newspaper (with illustrations). By December, a collection of Harte’s poetry was rushed to bookstores in time for the Christmas market; “it’s first six editions sold out in five days.”

* By 1871, a Boston newspaper retitled the poem “The Heathen Chinee” and future publishers followed suit, which further encouraged a literal interpretation. 

For years to come, politicians, hate groups, and even union organizers quoted the poem, out of context, to oppose Chinese immigration.

How many poets are so popular, in America, land of the corndog, that they sell MERCHANDISE?

The New York Post reported:

The moral of Harte’s story is that Chinese people are no better or worse; no more ambitious and no less trustworthy than anybody else willing to brave the actual desert for love of gold. He wrote later, “the Chinese "did as the Caucasian did in all respects, and, being more patient and frugal, did it a little better". Harte continually wrote in defense of Chinese immigrants.

Harte's poem shaped the popular American conception of the Chinese more than any other writing at the time,[11] and made him the most popular literary figure in America in 1870.

Harte called the poem "trash", and "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote."