I don't really know a lot about 19th century Chinese in America. I haven't found books concerning the subject (I do the best I can to filter out books biased either way on any subject), and, as concerns many other subjects, I don't entirely trust the internet. However, there are some things I have found while looking into other subjects.
Starting with 19th and early 20 century Chinese in Mexico...
I have heard over the years snippets here and there concerning racism in Mexico concerning Chinese. There is a family I personally know that the Mexican patriarch left central Mexico prior to the 1910 revolution in a large part because he had Chinese ancestry and was subject to prejudice in a land full of racial preoccupation (there were formerly nearly forty words to describe various degrees of all kinds of racial mixtures). It's as if he couldn't be "Mexican" until he came to the United States. He said he didn't leave anything behind in Mexico.
I had also heard from various places that Pancho Villa's bunch killed every Chinese they found, which was confirmed by an exhaustive biography of Villa (no axes to grind) I have recently read. It seems that since they were primarily merchants in Chihuahua they were considered exploiters of the Mexican people. However, Villa admired Japanese, of whom two were used in a plot to poison the extraordinarily paranoid Villa using a slow acting poison in a cup of coffee (it had worked using dogs in an experiment). The two Japanese discretely fled and Villa didn't even get sick. Perhaps a low dose with Villa splitting the cup with someone else (unconscious paranoid habit, his eating habits showed lots of paranoia about being poisoned, such as showing up unexpected to share meals among various groups of his men and switching plates with other diners). Anyhow, it seems that a Chinese shop keeper was considered worse than any of the elitist land owner, monopolistic, politically autocratic, abusive, kleptomaniac, wealthy Terraza clan that Villa hated with a turbo charged passion.
In the 19th century America Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) decried prejudice against Chinese in California, it seems that many fled California for New York city (a New York city Chinese laundry owner formerly of California said "Here no boys throw rocks at you"). An Irish immigrant named Denis Kearney founded the Marxist inspired Workingman's Party of California who proposed "dealing" with the Chinese first and the capitalists second. He also claimed to be the inspiration of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion act.
http://www1.assumption.edu/users/mcc...n/default.html
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...4p02M-CbMUTC9w
It has been mentioned that there was a severe recession when the Union Pacific railroad completed the bulk of its track construction with perhaps thousands of Chinese laborers laid off and seeking work. There were riots in San Francisco which remind me of the Irish riots in New York concerning freeing black slaves - cheap competition for scarce work.
Most Chinese expected to return to China after making a certain amount of money, few Chinese women came with them. There was trafficking of Chinese women to serve as prostitutes for the Chinese men, there were quite a few Chinese men / Irish women marriages in New York due to the amount of Irish casualties during the Civil War.
The Chinese were addicted to gambling among themselves, there were opium dens. I believe they mostly kept to themselves and had trouble assimilating (most didn't want to stay and had no interest in either mixing or becoming American) which wouldn't endear them to the mainstream culture. There were Tongs which were nominally for social purposes but in fact were fronts for criminal Chinese gangs.
The bitter background discussion leading up to the 1868 14th amendment (just after the civil war) was about the black right to vote and bear arms while denying firearms to Indian tribes with which the United States were engaged in hostilities and denying Chinese workers American citizenship. The compromise reached resulted in the wording of the amendment, which had the eventual unintended consequence of granting birthright citizenship to 20th and 21st century children of illegal aliens.
Wong Kim Ark was born in America to Chinese parents and went with his parents when they returned to China. Upon his return to America it was alleged that he was a foreigner who shouldn't enter the United States. In the 1898 United States vs Wong Kim Ark the supreme court took the literal interpretation of the 14th amendment.
I haven't carefully studied either one:
The supreme court decision concerning Wong Kim Ark
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/fede.../649/case.html
An essay concerning whether or not the Supreme court may have gotten Wong Kim Ark wrong
http://www.federalistblog.us/2006/12...be_considered/
I need to know more, but while it is clear that there was discrimination against 19th century Chinese in America, they generally didn't as a group make an effort to become a part of "us". On the other hand, there was discrimination against Chinese in 19th and 20th century Mexico as well. Doesn't make a big difference if one is lynched in San Francisco by a white American mob or shot in the head in Chihuahua or Guanajuato by brown mestizo revolutionaries, it's all the same thing.