The Barbour Scholarships: Striving for Better Education, or Just a Tool for Assimilation?
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The Barbour Scholarships: Striving for Better Education,
or Just a Tool for Assimilation?
United States foreign policy has continually posed a controversial and changing issue. In the early twentieth century, Congress enacted multiple immigration regulation acts, including the Johnson Reed Act in 1924, which restricted immigration from China, Japan and India in response to American citizens uncertainties and resentment towards minorities. As more minorities diversified the nation and began to prosper, white Americans feared the loss of power and control over them, instilling increased tension among the races. Thus, in 1917 the acceptance of the Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women at the University of Michigan was a drastic counter- cultural venture; through it, Asian women were given an invaluable opportunity to obtain a fully funded education at the university so they could return to their home countries with new knowledge and professional skills that would allow them to escape the oppression of their native countries.
For centuries, women have been considered subordinate to men, treated as lesser human beings, born only to serve their sexual counterpart. Even in the United States, women did not earn the right to vote until 1920, and were still treated unequally in the work force and in the society as a whole. In Asia, the perception and treatment of women was no different. From birth, women in Asia were seen as inferior to men. As Katie Curtin describes in Women in China, if a woman gave birth to a daughter and, thus, failed in the task of producing a son to carry on the family name and help support the family financially, “she could be cast out of her husbands home, disgraced, and socially ostracized. It was only her function as a breeder that she attained a status in society.” In China, women were treated as slaves, forced to have their feet bound in order to restrain them from leaving the home. As Curtin describes, women went through three stages of life: “In the first she was under the authority of the father, then under her husband, and finally, if he died, she was subject to her son.” Even the symbols of men and women emphasized their social standing. Yin describing women meant dark, evil, and passive, whereas Yang, which meant men stood for strong, active, and brave.
In Japan, some school-aged girls were taken from their families as in a slave raid, for the purpose of becoming military prostitutes, or “comfort women.” The schools were used as a source for recruitment, thus dissuading many never to attend school for fear of being taken against their will. Many victims were so young that they had never previously engaged in sexual relations: “Like other virgins, Bok Sil resisted with all her strength, but was violently deflowered. She ended up covered in blood while screams sounded from the adjoining rooms.” As a result of Confucian ideology, women were excluded from the educational system, and taught how to behave as women and respectable wives, rather than as self-reliant and independent-thinking individuals. With the collapse of the feudal dynasty, women were eventually permitted to receive an education but only up to the senior level comparable to our high school system today, in which they were taught four subjects: history, geography, arts and natural science. As expressed in Jeanne Bisilliat and Michele Fielouxs book Women of the Third World: “Imprisoned as they are by their own culture and ignorant of other cultures, the oppression to which women are subjected takes place at every level: their work, their condemnation and their redemption.”
Through the Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women at the University of Michigan, women who were oppressed in their native countries were given the ability to overcome their former social standing and receive an unprecedented education. The Barbour Scholarship was established by a University of Michigan alumnus from the class of 1863, Mr. Levi Barbour, after observing the lack of educational opportunities for women in Asian countries. In his explanation for creating the scholarship, Mr. Barbour states: “The idea of the Oriental girls scholarship was to bring girls from the Orient, give them Occidental education, and let them take back whatever they find good and assimilate the blessings among the peoples from which they come.” These goals promote speculation as to what underlying aims the University had by encouraging the scholars to return home and essentially stimulate Westernization.
In their home countries, as described above, the Barbour Scholars were unable to obtain a high degree of education, much less allowed to become physicians, teachers or other respected professionals. Two Barbour Scholars were previously forced to dress as boys to attend school as there were only boys institutes established in their native countries. To emphasize these womens social standing in Asia, in one instance a woman accepted as a Barbour Scholar came to the University with her feet bound. These drastic instances of inequality occurred more frequently during the early years of the Scholarship, as women from China and Japan were primarily chosen.
Bringing these students to the United States in itself was a huge feat for the University of Michigan as anti-minority feelings flourished throughout the nation. Immigrants supplied cheap labor for the work force, thus replacing many higher paid white workers. As whites anger towards immigrants increased, Congress responded with a variety of immigration regulation acts, ensuring whites supremacy and power. In May of 1882, with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese immigrants were no longer permitted to enter the United States for up to ten years. The Act further emphasized the anti-immigrant feeling of the citizens by stating that: “The master of any vessel who shall knowingly bring within the United States on such vessel, and land or permit to be landed, any Chinese laborer, from any foreign port of place, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and or conviction.” In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act further excluded Japanese, Indians and other Asians claiming that they were ineligible for citizenship due to their race and inassimilable culture. As Mae M. Ngai states in her book Impossible Subjects: “The nativism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century comprised a cultural nationalism in which cultural homogeneity more than race superiority was the principle concern.” Whites wanted an all-white society, one with white ideas, beliefs and culture. Immigrants brought diversity and change to the United States, and were thus shunned and unwelcome. This national feeling of resentment