Michael Keevak
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691140315
- eISBN:
- 9781400838608
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691140315.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their ...
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In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their willingness to trade with the West, and their presumed capacity to become Christianized. But by the end of the seventeenth century the category of whiteness was reserved for Europeans only. When and how did Asians become “yellow” in the Western imagination? Looking at the history of racial thinking, this book explores the notion of yellowness and shows that this label originated in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific discourses on race. From the walls of an ancient Egyptian tomb, which depicted people of varying skin tones including yellow, to the phrase “yellow peril” at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe and America, the book follows the development of perceptions about race and human difference. It indicates that the conceptual relationship between East Asians and yellow skin did not begin in Chinese culture or Western readings of East Asian cultural symbols, but in anthropological and medical records that described variations in skin color. Eighteenth-century taxonomers such as Carl Linnaeus, as well as Victorian scientists and early anthropologists, assigned colors to all racial groups, and once East Asians were lumped with members of the Mongolian race, they began to be considered yellow. Demonstrating how a racial distinction took root in Europe and traveled internationally, the book weaves together multiple narratives to tell the complex history of a problematic term.Less
In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their willingness to trade with the West, and their presumed capacity to become Christianized. But by the end of the seventeenth century the category of whiteness was reserved for Europeans only. When and how did Asians become “yellow” in the Western imagination? Looking at the history of racial thinking, this book explores the notion of yellowness and shows that this label originated in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific discourses on race. From the walls of an ancient Egyptian tomb, which depicted people of varying skin tones including yellow, to the phrase “yellow peril” at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe and America, the book follows the development of perceptions about race and human difference. It indicates that the conceptual relationship between East Asians and yellow skin did not begin in Chinese culture or Western readings of East Asian cultural symbols, but in anthropological and medical records that described variations in skin color. Eighteenth-century taxonomers such as Carl Linnaeus, as well as Victorian scientists and early anthropologists, assigned colors to all racial groups, and once East Asians were lumped with members of the Mongolian race, they began to be considered yellow. Demonstrating how a racial distinction took root in Europe and traveled internationally, the book weaves together multiple narratives to tell the complex history of a problematic term.
Michael Keevak
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691140315
- eISBN:
- 9781400838608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691140315.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter examines how the “yellow race” became an important focus in nineteenth-century anthropology. More specifically, it considers how the whole notion of skin tone had become inextricably ...
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This chapter examines how the “yellow race” became an important focus in nineteenth-century anthropology. More specifically, it considers how the whole notion of skin tone had become inextricably linked to scientifically validated prejudices and normative claims about higher and lower forms of human culture. The chapter first discusses why the term “Mongolian” was selected to represent the people of the Far East and compares it to “Tartar” before exploring how the new field of anthropology became preoccupied with the idea of anatomical quantification, and especially the measurement of skin color using an instrument known as the color top. It shows that the desire to find yellowness in East Asians was so ingrained in the Western imagination that some anthropologists tried to prove that their skin really was yellow.Less
This chapter examines how the “yellow race” became an important focus in nineteenth-century anthropology. More specifically, it considers how the whole notion of skin tone had become inextricably linked to scientifically validated prejudices and normative claims about higher and lower forms of human culture. The chapter first discusses why the term “Mongolian” was selected to represent the people of the Far East and compares it to “Tartar” before exploring how the new field of anthropology became preoccupied with the idea of anatomical quantification, and especially the measurement of skin color using an instrument known as the color top. It shows that the desire to find yellowness in East Asians was so ingrained in the Western imagination that some anthropologists tried to prove that their skin really was yellow.
Michael Keevak
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691140315
- eISBN:
- 9781400838608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691140315.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter examines how the discourse of yellow not only became ubiquitous in the West, but also migrated into East Asian cultures during the period 1895–1920, giving rise to “the yellow peril”—the ...
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This chapter examines how the discourse of yellow not only became ubiquitous in the West, but also migrated into East Asian cultures during the period 1895–1920, giving rise to “the yellow peril”—the notion that East Asians were yellow and perilous. It begins with a historical background on how the Far East came to be seen as a “yellow peril,” a term coined in 1895 and generally credited to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, specifically in response to Japan's defeat of China at the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War (also known as “The Yellow War”). The chapter then considers how the Western concept of a “yellow race” was understood in China and Japan before concluding with a discussion of the ways in which yellowness persisted as a potentially dangerous and threatening racial category in the early twentieth century.Less
This chapter examines how the discourse of yellow not only became ubiquitous in the West, but also migrated into East Asian cultures during the period 1895–1920, giving rise to “the yellow peril”—the notion that East Asians were yellow and perilous. It begins with a historical background on how the Far East came to be seen as a “yellow peril,” a term coined in 1895 and generally credited to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, specifically in response to Japan's defeat of China at the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War (also known as “The Yellow War”). The chapter then considers how the Western concept of a “yellow race” was understood in China and Japan before concluding with a discussion of the ways in which yellowness persisted as a potentially dangerous and threatening racial category in the early twentieth century.
Rychetta Watkins
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031618
- eISBN:
- 9781621031451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031618.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter applies the different facets of guerilla subjectivity—resistant, anticolonial, self-defined, self-determined, ideologically grounded, revolutionary agent—to a reading of Sam Greenlee’s ...
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This chapter applies the different facets of guerilla subjectivity—resistant, anticolonial, self-defined, self-determined, ideologically grounded, revolutionary agent—to a reading of Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969; 1990), Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976), and John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957; 1976). Greenlee’s novel is considered as an example of a stereotypical militant, revolutionary subjectivity. The novels by Walker and Okada are used to examine how these literary representations of the guerilla synthesize politics and aesthetics in a textual subject that complicates representations of blackness and yellowness, as well as revolution and resistance.Less
This chapter applies the different facets of guerilla subjectivity—resistant, anticolonial, self-defined, self-determined, ideologically grounded, revolutionary agent—to a reading of Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969; 1990), Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976), and John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957; 1976). Greenlee’s novel is considered as an example of a stereotypical militant, revolutionary subjectivity. The novels by Walker and Okada are used to examine how these literary representations of the guerilla synthesize politics and aesthetics in a textual subject that complicates representations of blackness and yellowness, as well as revolution and resistance.
