Of Race and Reconciliation airs 2/27 at 4 a.m. – chronicles the Chinese experience in America around the year 1885. That was the year the Chinese residents of Tacoma were forcefully expelled from the city against the backdrop of increasingly alarming and even violent tensions between American citizens caught in an economic downturn and Chinese immigrants seeking opportunity in “Gum San,” or the Land of the Golden Mountains they had heard about in America. Of Race and Reconciliation producer Forrest Burger traveled through six states to take an unflinching look at this period in time, but also document how the tensions between American citizens and immigrant populations provide relevant lessons in today’s political climate, and in Tacoma’s case, how far efforts toward reconciliation have come.
