Chinese immigrants, African Americans, and racial anxiety in the United States, 1848-82
By: Najia Aarim-Heriot.
Series: The Asian American experience
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 289
Subjects: Chinese Americans -- Social conditions -- 19th century.; Immigrants -- United States -- Social conditions -- 19th century.; Chinese Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- 19th century.; African Americans -- Social conditions -- 19th century.; African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- 19th century.; Racism -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; United States -- Race relations -- Political aspects.; United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1877.; United States -- Politics and government -- 1877-1881.
Description: "This book explores the striking similarities in the ways the Chinese and African American populations in the United States were disenfranchised during the mid-1800s. Najia Aarim-Heriot reveals that both groups were prevented from becoming members of the American political and social community by means of nearly identical negative stereotypes, shrill rhetoric, and crippling exclusionary laws.".

"The first detailed examination of the link between the "Chinese question" and the "Negro problem" in nineteenth-century America, this work forcefully and convincingly demonstrates that the anti-Chinese sentiment that led up to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is inseparable from the racial double standards applied by mainstream white society to white and non-white groups during the same period.".

"Najia Aarim-Heriot argues that previous studies on American Sinophobia have overemphasized the resentment labor organizations felt toward incoming Chinese workers. This focus has caused crucial elements of the discussion to be overlooked, especially the broader ways in which the growing nation sought to define and unify itself through the exclusion and oppression of nonwhite peoples."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-275) and index.
Table of contents: title: Racial nativism in America until 1850; title: The beginning of the Negroization of the Chinese in California, 1850-53; title: "The Copper of the Pacific" and "the Ebony of the Atlantic" : race relations, 1854-60; title: Race relations in the Civil War era; title: Congressional Reconstruction and the race questions, 1865-69; title: Americans and the Chinese question, 1865-69; title: Chinese labor in the South and in New England, 1865-70; title: Chinese immigrants, African Americans, and the retreat from Reconstruction, 1870-74; title: Race relations in California, 1870-74; title: Intensification of the anti-Chinese movement, 1874-80; title: The politics of racism in the Chinese exclusion debates, 1879-82.