Muslims are to Trump as the Chinese were to President Arthur in 1882

[pampango]

The “Chinaman” was a familiar figure to many Americans in the mid-1800s. His likeness was unmistakable: slit eyes, a perpetual grimace, traditional loose-fitting garb and a long, snake-like ponytail tightly tied to an otherwise bald head. He looked like an unsavory character — and most importantly, an alien one.

The 1870s saw the formation of the Workingmen’s Party of California, whose motto was simply and succinctly “The Chinese Must Go!” Within a decade, its campaign succeeded, contributing to President Chester Arthur’s 1882 signing of the Chinese Exclusion Act: the first federal law to exclude a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the country.

The Chinese Exclusion Act is also the closest cousin to what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed Monday when he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. Since it was repealed in 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act has been remembered as a dark period in American history, when Chinese immigration all but halted for several years. Trump’s ban on Muslims would be an even more extreme iteration of this mandate, as it targets people based on religion instead of ethnicity.

The position of politicians supporting the Chinese Exclusion Act was characterized in a biting editorial cartoon the year of its signing. The image shows the archetypal Chinaman sitting outside a steel door labeled the “Golden Gate of Liberty.” At the bottom of the cartoon, a caption reads “THE ONLY ONE BARRED OUT” and quotes an “enlightened American statesman” as saying, “We must draw the line somewhere, you know.”



“Chinese people were considered not only un-American but the opposite of Americans,” said Lee, who recently authored “The Making of Asian America: A History.” “They were considered diametrically opposed to what was America.” Likewise, Trump has supported his idea of a ban on Muslims with claims that Muslim Americans harbor ill will against the country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/08/muslims-are-to-trump-as-the-chinese-were-to-president-arthur-in-1882/

The xenophobic themes never seem to change on the right; just the names of the players.

[patsimp]

1. Were the Chinese becoming suicide bombers or shooting up innocent people to get into heaven?

I don't truly know.

[pampango]

2. Are you stereotyping Muslims just a little bit?

Were the Chinese becoming suicide bombers or shooting up innocent people to get into heaven? I don't truly know.

I am a little surprised that you don't know that the hysteria about the Chinese immigrants had nothing to do with violence. It had to do with the fear of 'others', particularly foreign 'others'. That is the same fear that Trump plays on today.

[patsimp]

6. and my point is that this is not a fear of others - it is a reaction to deadly attacks by

muslims following a form of their religion.

[haele]

4. No, the newspapers at that time were full of stories of Chinese Opium dens -

The "common knowledge" of the time was that Chinese would kidnap young white women for sex slaves, corrupt of young American manhood, and had an inscrutability masking a savage desire to control the West Coast for the Emperor of China through torture, blackmail, and crime.
Chinese Tongs would just as soon kill you and enslave your white children. They had no regard for human life, and had an exquisite desire for watching their enemies die slowly in agony. Fu Manchu wanted to rule the world...
There were a few "Good Chinamen" out there in the general media, but they were generally considered some form of loyal companion to some white man.
This is what the Chinese had to live with, what they had to put up with, the attitudes they had to defend themselves against.

Look, even the Trade Unions at the time didn't want anything to do with the Chinese. If you live in California, there's all sorts of historical documentation available that show how f'n bad it was to be Chinese in the late 19th/early 20th century. From common media (books, magazines, newspapers) to laws that were passed.

You think "Big Trouble in Little China" was just a fun pastiche movie? In a sad way, it exposed the myth of the Chinaman in America in the 19th century.

In the American National Psyche the Chinese were part of the "yellow peril" from after the last spike in the Trans-Continental railroad was hammered in up until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
And even after that, there's still the subtle shadow of the inscrutable Chinaman with his/her exotic and un-American culture - even if the families of "Mr. Hong" or "Ms. Chin" have been in the same U.S. city for four, five or six generations, never leaving the U.S. except for the time one or another son had been drafted and sent to fight a foreign war.

Haele

[KamaAina]

3. Factoid: Arthur had the first birfer controversy.

He was born in northern Vermont, near the Canadian border. Some of his opponents suggested he was actually born across the border.

[yuiyoshida]

5. If I remember right, this took place AFTER the Chinese

helped Build the American Railroad....








I wonder how many Chinese Americans in this country have ancestors who worked on these tracks. DO you know that after the great earthquake of 1906, Chinese helped rebuild San Francisco but when it came time for building their places in the City, the city officials told them to go to hell.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5337215