A unifying enemy: Anti-Chinese racism and white identity in the West, 1850-1900

Between 1849 and 1900, more than half of the Chinese population was ‘driven out’ of West Coast cities by deportation, murder, and terror. The origin of sensationalist news media, ""yellow journalism,"" comes from this era of hysterical media warning of the imminent ""Yellow Peril"" invading America. Political pressure from California brought about the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act: the first specific barring of an ethnic group from immigration. Historian Jean Pfaelzer describes the systematic legal and vigilante attacks on Chinese immigrants in this period as an “ethnic cleansing.” From the gold rush to the turn of the century, the newly formed Western states of California, Oregon, and Washington persecuted Chinese Americans through violence and legal action. In new communities of disparate ethnic origins, defining an inferior, threatening “other” allowed Europeans to establish a cohesive, superior identity. The Chinese as a racial ‘enemy’ were used to bind together a new white identity in the emerging societies of the West. My study is important because it examines the purpose of anti-Chinese racism in the American West, as it was stoked by whites at all levels of society for their own benefit. In some ways anti-Chinese sentiment was deliberately manufactured as a common enemy for otherwise disparate European immigrants to unify against as a cohesive 'white,' 'American' whole. Anti-Chinese sentiment was a 'functional,' purposeful racism to achieve specific goals - political power and unity (for whites) in divided times. In my research I felt this required more examination than the sources I found put forward. Essay submission was sponsored by Dr. Denis McKim, (Humanities and Social Sciences Department) for course HIST 1140 and was presented at the New Westminster campus on April 11, 2024, for Student Research Days 2024.