Quote:
Originally Posted by Irenicus
Use a university database (Proquest/EBSCO/JSTOR, etc.) to access the New York Times' archive or another newspaper's equivalent. Or just go to Times' archive.
Enjoy. I had a lot of fun last semester going through all that, actually. Oh, the silly humans.
As a contribution, enjoy this link to a pretty legendary LIFE article. LOL.
In 1913? They had it pretty bad actually. All the hate they were throwing at the Chinese got directed at them instead. They couldn't get citizenship, they couldn't even own land or marry whites in many cases. Bloody Japs were gonna take over America (yes, that was older than the 80's...or even WW2).
It was only during the 60's with the model minority myth that the Japanese got a break. Chinese got that a bit earlier when they became poor oppressed friendly panda during the Second World War. "Good Asians" vs. "Bad Asians," they used to say.
Yes, Mayflower Americans, your great grandparents were racist bastards. If it's any consolation, so were mine, probably, I don't actually know. |
Actually... you don't have to go very far back... my dad's mother called blacks "nigra" and had no clue that was a problem and was very proud her grandparents had taught their slaves to read and given them property after the emancipation. It actually sent her to bed when my high school prom group consisted of a black+white couple and a japanese+white couple in 1975 (hmmm, I may have to look for that pic). And, of course, we have in the US the recent spurts of racial violence with the increasing stridency of the far right wing here.
That Life article is hilarious/tragic in its ineptness and lack of realization of just how DIFFERENT Chinese are from south to north as well as how different Japanese are from region to region. But the asians even make those mistakes themselves (recalls a fellow Korean student who was adamant that she could tell someone's nationality from their looks alone even when she repeatedly failed example tests).
I liked the Zenith portable radio ad next to the article
