Anti-Asian Quotes

His reference was to ethnic Indians and Chinese living in Kenya and other countries of Africa. Asians are a minority group in African countries and the legally sanctioned discrimination against them is part of an ugly type of discrimination which still exists.

This quotation illustrates how extensive and virulent anti-Asian racism had become. Gompers was a left wing liberal, but also a labor leader, and the prospect of millions of oriental immigrants competing for the existing American jobs was frightening. The irony of this quotation was that most of the labor constituency that Gompers represented had been immigrants or were the children of immigrants who earlier had frightened American workers and whose ethnicity had been opposed—Irish, Italians, Jews.

This song and this musical was a profound attack on the essence of racial segregation at a time when discrimination was legal and practiced throughout the country and almost universally in the South. Southern politicians castigated the song, the show, and especially Hammerstein who they called a Communist for promoting such radical views. Ironically, South Pacific became one of the most frequently produced High School Shows by 1979 and remained so into the 21st century including in the South.

She had read reports that Chinese faced in several lands of the West. The worst of these were Peru and Cuba where Chinese emigrant labor were kidnapped and worked in slave conditions. Prior to Cixi, Chinese Emperors had little or no concern for the laborers and peasants in their own country much less those Chinese who had gone abroad in search of a better life.

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.

This resolution was bad enough for its overt racism. Ironically, the major victims of Japanese aggression have been Asians—China, Korea, Manchuria, and others. “White” empires had economic interests in throughout Asia and this was what Britten and many others were concerned with protecting. This quotation is important for another reason. At the very moment Britton introduced the resolution, Charles Evans Hughes our Secretary of State was welcoming a new, very high level ambassador to Washington. The administration had decided on a negotiating initiative and Britton and other Congressmen cut the legs out from under the administrations diplomatic efforts. It was particularly bad because one of the Japanese complaints about America and other white nations was their racism and discrimination against Asians. Congress undermining Administration diplomatic efforts has an all too frequent history in America.

1st Viscount Shibusawa. Not only was there gross discrimination—mostly in the Western States—against the Japanese, but they were subjected to physical harassment and violence.

One hundred years later, many in America would come to this same conclusion and American manufacturing, to outcompete China and other Oriental cultures, have turned to highly complex, constantly innovative, and technically advanced processes.

16 white miners were charged with riot, arson, murder and robbery. However the local white jury acquitted them all. Southern white murders of Blacks were not the only terrible crimes that were openly committed with impunity.

The fascist, military clique that ran Japan at the time had no respect for treaties or International Law as understood by most Western nations. China was a land of warlords and corrupt military leaders. There was then an extensive history of Anti-Asian feeling and activity in America. Stimson, made the classic mistake of correctly assessing the Japanese leaders but generalizing from them and some Chinese corrupt military leaders to all Asians and their governments. Indeed, after the American occupation of Japan ending WWII, the Japanese adapted to democracy very well and have been instrumental in making and keeping many international treaties,

In Malaysia despite some of the world’s most racist laws against the ethnic Chinese, they still retain a disproportionate share of the wealth. The racist laws an the county’s notorious corruption have ironically produced a small Malay group of tycoons whose exploitation of the masses is notorious. They are protected by the government however as many are related to officials and their families, but logic such as this is actually publicly expounded to defend the situation.

This is a very important historical quotation. When the anti-Asian racists first organized into a League, their racism was offensive to most national politicians and Eastern business and political leaders. However, this changed quite rapidly. It illustrates the constant vigilance that has to be maintained to condemn racism whenever it erupts last that was anathema becomes fashionable. The extremes become the norm. These minutes were taken when the League was still operating under the name of the “Japanese and Korean Exclusion League”.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. He was describing the generation of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast who were discriminated against and treated badly by the established population.

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.

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 was an effort to keep Asian immigrants—who were ineligible for citizenship under the racist Federal laws though the 1930s from competing with American farmers. Many of the Western states also had laws or Constitutions prohibiting Asians to not only own land but also forbidding them from even having long tern leases on land. The Japanese in California were so successful that in the 1920s that state passed a version of Asian land ownership prohibition. The Supreme Court at the time actually ruled that this kind of discrimination was legal. A French alien could own land but not a Japanese. The loophole however was that many Japanese short term tenant farmers who had saved enough money to buy land, had children who were born in the United State and hence where citizens. The land was purchased by the citizen children. California however went so far as to make it illegal for a Japanese person to be a guardian of his minor children if the children were born in the United States, but that law was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.