The scale of what Trump has promised is difficult to fathom and without recent precedent. A century and a half ago, however, a movement to cast out a different group of people began to accelerate in the United States.
Despite a history of labor’s hostility toward AAPI workers, we are a vital part of today’s labor movement and remain vigilant to ensure we do not regress in the name of trade or nationalism. We fight for worker rights and safe communities.
In the gold-rush era, initial ceremonial greetings soon gave way to bigotry and violence as Chinese immigrants were tarred as a “coolie race” and cast as a threat to free white labor. The two books under review tell the story of how and why.
The Chinese Question and Chinese exclusion policies circumnavigated the Anglo-American world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and supported the consolidation of British and American power over global emigration and trade.
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