A good thread about the history of anti-Asian racism in pre-WW2 America. Note the pretty incredible shift from before the war to after.
https://twitter.com/mot427/status/1372386251723051008
This shift is well-documented in @ellendwu's "The Color of Success".
Basically, the U.S. government cracked down on anti-Asian racism, because of its military and diplomatic entanglements in Asia.
amazon.com/Color-Success-…
Basically, the U.S. government cracked down on anti-Asian racism, because of its military and diplomatic entanglements in Asia.
amazon.com/Color-Success-…
What's pretty remarkable to me is that neither the Korean War (where we actually fought China!) nor the Vietnam War seems to have provoked a spate of anti-Asian attacks in the U.S. -- or if it did, it hasn't been well-recorded.
This suggests that when the U.S. government wants to prevent overseas conflicts from leading to a racist backlash at home, it is extremely effective at doing so.
An important lesson if tensions with China continue to ratchet up.
An important lesson if tensions with China continue to ratchet up.
It also demonstrates something I've been saying for a while, which is that Trumpism is really an attempt to turn back the clock to the pre-WW2 period. The war changed us -- made us more internationalist and more tolerant. Trump tried to reverse all that.
Of course there will be no going back to the pre-WW2 U.S. Technological, geopolitical, and demographic changes make that utterly impossible. But instead we might face an age of multifaceted racial hatred, suspicion, and chaos.
It is incumbent on all of us to keep our country from returning to the days of widespread mass racist violence...this, I think, is our primary social task at this moment...
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