A documentary entitled The Six is premiering in China today, after premiering in the United States in 2018, and shares the story about how six Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the U.S. after they survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Racism against people of Asian descent was prevalent during the early 20th century, but is that same racism still active today, which led to the recent shootings of Asian massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia? No. It’s just another element of the Left utilizing history in order to broadly shame present day Americans as racist.

Executive-produced by James Cameron, director of the blockbuster film Titanic, the documentary follows the story of Lee Bing, Fang Lang, Chang Chip, Ling Hee, Ah Lam and Chung Foo. All were professional mariners headed to their next job when the world’s largest ship had an unfortunate dalliance with an iceberg.

“They paid a fare for third-class transport like anyone else, and frankly, third class on the Titanic was probably some of the nicest accommodations on a ship that they had ever encountered,” Steven Schwankert, the lead researcher on the film, said.

According to Schwankert, the men became targets of the grief and outrage for surviving, while others died, and denied entry to the United States. Stories even emerged that the men hid under the seats of the life rafts or that they disguised themselves in women’s clothing to get one of those coveted seats.

“If they have a legitimate opportunity to get into a lifeboat seat, there was no reason not to do that. There was no reason to choose death for death’s sake and not survive, but there was definitely a feeling after it was all over that if a man survived, he automatically took the place of a woman or a child, and that just simply isn’t the case,” Schwankert said.

It’s difficult to evaluate the claims of the documentary, though there were definitely six Chinese survivors, there is no detailed research information provided on the film’s website but it’s likely that they did experience prejudice. 

Due to rising tensions between Chinese immigrants and American workers in the late 1800s over employment opportunities, President Rutherford B. Hayes passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, “which, per the terms of the Angell Treaty, suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers (skilled or unskilled) for a period of 10 years…The 1882 Act was the first in American history to place broad restrictions on immigration.”

But it wasn’t just the Chinese, there are a number of cartoons from around the same time period that disparaged Italians, Germans, the Irish, Jews and other groups. It was an overly paranoid and racist reaction to the huge influx of different people groups coming into the country and disrupting the status quo.

But Schwankert is arguing that there’s a connection between the racism the Chinese passengers experienced after surviving the sinking of the Titanic, which happened over 100 years ago and not in 1997 when the eponymous film came out, and the allegations of growing racism against Asians today.

“I wish that it were not quite so timely. The horrendous events that we saw in Atlanta really just highlight that the issues that six Chinese passengers on the Titanic faced over 100 years ago are still issues in the United States today,” he said.

But the question remains, is the racism that people of Asian heritage are experiencing today the same as the racism that occurred in 1912, as Schwankert alleges?

Though there has been an increase of seemingly targeted attacks, it doesn’t have any connection to what happened a century ago in the wake of the Titanic’s sinking (yes, I’m aware of the pun). If anything, it’s more likely influenced by ignorant people who blame Chinese people for the COVID-19 pandemic, since that’s where the disease originated.

It’s terrible, but it’s unclear what a ship currently resting at the bottom of the Atlantic and a disease originating in China have in common.

The man who made the horrific decision to shoot up Asian owned massage parlors said that he was motivated by sexual addiction, not racism—but the media was eager to connect the shooting to their growing narrative that America is a nation founded on notions of white supremacy and is inherently driven by hatred.

This is false. The United States is far from perfect, but there are those who are far too eager to take historical situations and try to make inaccurate comparisons to today.  

Picture from Gallery at The Six website.