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Yellow Peril was a phrase that originated in the late 19th century with greater immigration of Chinese and Japanese laborers to the United States. The term refers to the skin color of east Asians, and the racist notion that Asians were a threat to civilization. The phrase "yellow peril" was common in the newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst. The variation "yellow terror" was also used.
The "yellow peril" manifested itself in government policy with the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which reduced Chinese immigration from 30,000 per year to just 105. The labor leader Samuel Gompers argued, "The superior whites had to exclude the inferior Asiatics, by law, or, if necessary, by force of arms."
In 1920, the author Lothrop Stoddard wrote The Rising Tide of Color arguing against Asian immigration, claiming immigrants threatened American society, with their presence a "peril."
In the 1980s the Yellow Peril was revived as the US was in intense competition with Japan over industrial supremacy. Many believed that the beating to death of Vincent ChinVincent Chin ( 1955 June 23, 1982) was a Chinese American industrial draftsman killed in 1982 in suburban Detroit, Michigan by two white autoworkers Chrysler plant superintendent Ronald Ebens and his recently laid off step-son, Michael Nitz. The murder wa was a part of US sentiment.
The Yellow Peril is a major topic of study in Asian-American studies.
1 Fictional Use
Sax RohmerArthur Henry Sarsfield Ward ( February 15, 1883 June 1, 1959), better known as Sax Rohmer was a prolific English novelist. He is most remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu. Born in Birmingham he had a entirely und in writing about Dr. Fu ManchuFu Manchu is a fictional character, a villain of Chinese origin, first featured in a series of novels by Sax Rohmer. Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and lo in his series of novels referred to him as representative of the Yellow Peril.
The "Yellow Peril" was a frequent theme of pulp fictionPulp magazines often called simply "pulps", were inexpensive text fiction magazines widely published in the 1930s 1950s. The first "pulp" is considered to be Frank Munsey's revamped Argosy of 1894. Most of the few pulps still thriving today are science fi in the early 20th century.
2 See also
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- Chinese AmericanA Chinese American is an American who is of ethnic Chinese descent. They are one group of overseas Chinese and also one group of Asian Americans. Immigration Chinese immigration to the United States has come in several waves. According to the records from
- Japanese AmericanEric Shinseki of Hawaii became the first Asian American military chief of staff. Community leaders are currently courting him to run for Governor or U. Japanese Americans or Nikkei , are a group of people who trace their ancestry to Japan or Okinawa and a
- Model minorityThe Model minority is a stereotype for a minority group that is successful in the country they are in. In North America it is a racial stereotype for Asian Americans. This stereotype began in the 1960s when American news media began reporting on the succe
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