Brittany Tran Menacing. Corrupt. Threats. These characteristics revolved around Asian Americans during the period of growing Asian immigration during 19th and 20th century America, collectively culminating into the idea of the Yellow Peril.
The Yellow Peril is the intense fear that Chinese immigrants will invade and destroy the West in hordes, subsequently extending to all Asian groups. These xenophobic ideas manifested from the enduring fears underlying European society of the exotic “Orient” and included ideas of Asians as threatening, uncivilized, disease-ridden aliens whose purpose was to pollute pure, white society with non-Christian ideas. Yellow Peril beliefs are a form of racialization, the phenomenon in which ideas about different bodies are socially constructed by people in positions of power with particular agendas, who imposed their authority by specifically associating Asian Americans with repulsive characteristics. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Yellow Peril discourse was perpetuated by Asian exclusion policies and fueled the anti-Asian movement. Due to the increasing Asian immigration during this period, Yellow Peril fears intensified and US officials sought to decrease immigration, so they built Angel Island Immigration Station in the San Francisco Bay to selectively exclude Asians from entering the US. On Angel Island, Asian immigrants were detained for months to years in demoralizing conditions, subject to intense medical exams and nearly impossible interrogations, and were essentially imprisoned because they were isolated on the island. Yellow Peril discourse further justified the growing anti-Asian movement during this period. Xenophobic actions ranged from racist phrases hurled at Asian Americans walking on the streets to outright violence. For example, almost 300 attacks against Japanese Americans were recorded in San Francisco in 1906. Anti-Asian exclusion groups and laws were also implemented in response to growing Yellow Peril fears—predominantly those of Asians taking jobs from white laborers. Laws like the 1917 and 1924 Immigration Acts were imposed to restrict Asian immigration, while white labor groups like the Workingmen’s Party of California and the Asiatic Exclusion League pushed for Asian exclusion. Ideas that Asians were sources of contamination also stemmed from Yellow Peril beliefs. When smallpox overwhelmed San Francisco in 1876, health officials immediately blamed it on the “filthy and diseased” Chinese immigrants living in Chinatown, which was deemed a “plague spot.” Public health officials targeted Chinatown through surveillance, random inspections, and the nuisance law; authorities justified that this law was enforced to prevent environmental pollution from contaminating living spaces, but it was realistically used to regulate Chinese immigrants by controlling their conduct in public spaces and evicting them from their properties, while justifying these actions by maintaining Yellow Peril ideas that whites needed to be protected from “filthy” Chinese people. The current treatment and ideas towards Asian Americans are linked to historic Yellow Peril beliefs. Anti-Asian racism across the US ranges from microaggressions to violence, which has increased significantly with the COVID-19 pandemic because of foreigner racialization: between March and August 2020 alone, over 2,583 incidents of anti-Asian racism were reported. This specific form of racialization associates Asian Americans with Yellow Peril ideas that Asians are deviant, public health threats who must be infected simply based on their appearance and COVID-19’s Chinese origins. Characterizations of COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus” by powerful parties for political purposes further associates Asian Americans with disease and low standards of living. Ever since the rise of “China plague” and “China virus” discourse in the beginning of October, anti-Asian racism spiked once again, while ideas of justice and revenge against China began to circulate rapidly. This resurgence in Yellow Peril discourse is simply a rearticulation of historic ideas that Asian Americans are foreign, diseased, and in need of public health assistance, making Asians even more vulnerable to racism than before. Although rooted in history, Yellow Peril discourse has not yet disappeared; it still reverberates throughout our society today through Asian American discrimination and mistreatment.
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