Formation, consolidation, and diversification of the ethnic elite: The case of the Chinese immigrant community in the United States

Abstract

The Chinese immigrant community in the United States has gone through several historically significant periods: unrestricted immigration, Chinese exclusion, immigration on restricted quotas, and immigration on equal basis. Each historical period marks a unique pattern of immigrant adaptation and community development, which influences the formation, consolidation, and diversification of the elite. The aim of this article is to illuminate these processes within the greater Chinese immigrant community in the US. Members of the old elite are powerful to the extent that they are not assimilated; yet they remain powerless in the larger society because of their lack of participation. Members of the new elite groups, in contrast, achieve power by integrating themselves economically and socially into the larger society; yet their very integration, often at the expense of ethnic cohesiveness, subjects them to allegation of inferiority from the ethnic hierarchy. Thus they are powerless because they are too assimilated.