What is it about?
Newspapers are important means for people to express their views on issues of their concern. This essay examines The jewish Messenger's approach to the American exclusion of Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth century. It shows that Jews, due to their precarious position in the United States, had been trying to prove their Americanness by judging the anti-Chinese movement in line with Americans' boasted ideals.
Featured Image
Photo by Fabian Fauth on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Recent scholarship believes that American Jews generally followed mainstream whites to disparage and reject Chinese immigrants. This study contends that there existed another stance, one that cautiously navigated between loyalty to the American nation and compassion to the Chinese as fellow sufferers of mainstream discrimination.
Perspectives
Writing and revising this article supplies me with a valuable chance to deepen my understanding of inter-ethnic relations in the United States. I realize that racial interactions in America not only occur vertically between oppressed minorities and predominant whites but also horizontally between racial minorities themselves. The horizontal relationship is the same important and worthy of scholarly attention.
Tao Zhang
Sichuan International Studies University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Jewish Messenger in America’s Chinese Exclusion Debates, 1869–1902, European Journal of Jewish Studies, March 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/1872471x-bja10041.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
