Iris Chang Quotes
It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.
Chang, Iris. Interview by Robert Birnbaum. Identity Theory, 5 Nov. 2003.
Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. This usually progressive organization advocated the 8 hour work day and control of child labor but when it came to competitors for their members jobs, they became a leading racist and anti-Chinese immigration voice in America. The irony of this quotation was that most of the labor constituency that the Knights represented had been immigrants or were the children of immigrants who earlier had frightened American workers and whose ethnicity had been opposed—Irish and Italians.
This racist officer was the impetus for one of the terrible wrongs in American history but most of the national establishment and FDR himself signed off on it to his everlasting disgrace. See {587961} and {635792}.
While the Western nations were doubtless guilty of blatant racism and anti-Asian discrimination, the Japanese protest was tainted with a substantial degree of hypocrisy. At the Versailles Peace Treaty negotiations the Japanese argued strenuously for equal treatment of Japanese by the West but did not favor extension of the equality principle to Koreans, Chinese, Thais, Chomoros, and other Asian peoples. Japan itself, led by its Emperor, considered other Asian people racially and culturally inferior. Thus they were the inherent leaders of Asia and all Asian people.
Most social and demographic changes many people fear will continue on a trend and assume the extrapolation will become reality. Few ever do, and the fears turn out to be just fears.
The reason this historical quote is so important is not only that it provides more evidence of the anti-Asian racism that existed in America in the 1920s, but it also shows that The American Legion was one of the leaders in fomenting race hatred of Asians. The anti-Asian racism was much worse on the West Coast than on the East Coast where there was a thriving Chinese Community in New York City that was relatively un-harassed.
Iris Shun-Ru Chang was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking, and in 2003, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography, Finding Iris Chang, and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. The independent 2007 documentary film Nanking was based on her work and dedicated to her memory.
